Sy Tanner (Execution of)

Sy Tanner was hanged on July 25, 1902, at Forrest City (St. Francis County) for murdering his young brother-in-law. He was one of six men executed on the same date in Arkansas.

Sy (sometimes referred to as Cy or C.Y.) Tanner, twenty-five, was born on Centennial Island north of Memphis, Tennessee. Around 1899, he moved to St. Francis County in Arkansas. Tanner was described as “a bright mulatto.”

At some point Tanner loaned eighty-five cents to his sixteen-year-old brother-in-law, Robert Black, “a young and inoffensive negro, living in Blackfish township.” On August 21, 1901, Tanner and Black were in a local store when Tanner demanded to be repaid. Black offered to give him his new shirt to pay off the debt, but Tanner refused the offer and said he was going to go home and get his gun, threatening to kill Black unless he came up with the cash.

When he came back, Black offered to go to his employer to try to get the money, but as they left the store “Tanner turned on Black, and with an oath, emptied the contents of the gun into his body,” killing him. Tanner fled but was later captured in Mississippi County and returned to St. Francis County for trial.

Testimony “showed conclusively that the killing was not only premeditated and with malice aforethought, but that it was cruel, heartless and cold-blooded.” He was convicted on March 4, 1902, and sentenced to hang on May 22.

The sentence was delayed while Tanner appealed his conviction to the Arkansas Supreme Court, but in mid-June 1902 the justices affirmed the lower court ruling. On July 9, 1902, Governor Jeff Davis set July 25 as the date for both Tanner and murderer Lathe Hembree of Howard County to hang.

Tanner was sent to Little Rock (Pulaski County) while preparations were being made for his execution, which included the loan of a rope from the Lee County sheriff that had been used to hang murderer Henry LeSane in Marianna (Lee County) a few months before and construction of a gallows by local contractor Charles Bohne. St. Francis County sheriff W. E. Williams went to retrieve Tanner on July 24 and told the Arkansas Democrat, “I had him baptized the other day and now he is thoroughly repentant….Before that time he was as bad a man as Ashley Cocke [a murderer hanged two days earlier in Mississippi after delivering a profanity-laced tirade from the gallows] and says that had he known he was going to be hung he would have killed seven or eight more.”

On the morning of July 25, 1902, five local Black preachers came to the jail in Forrest City “and sang hymns, in which the condemned man joined, and offered up prayers.” Tanner was led to the gallows at 10:35 a.m. and asked the witnesses to join him in singing a hymn, “which he led without hesitation or faltering.” He then said a prayer “in which he expressed a confident belief that he had been forgiven.”

Williams opened the trap door at 10:41 a.m., but “Tanner’s feet touched the ground…his neck was not broken.” Deputies hauled him up twelve inches, and “he died from strangulation and was cut down after hanging 45 minutes.” Afterward, ropes that had bound his legs and from the trap door “were cut up and the crowd begged for pieces to keep as souvenirs.”

In addition to Hembree and Tanner, four other men would also hang on July 25, 1902—James Kitts in Desha County, Dee Noland and Tom Simms in Hempstead County, and Dave McWhorter in Crawford County.

For additional information:
“Circuit Court.” Forrest City Times, March 14, 1902, p. 2.

“Cy Tanner Hanged.” Forrest City Times, July 25, 1902, p. 2.

“More Local.” Forrest City Times, April 25, 1902, p. 6.

“Six Swing to Eternity in Arkansas Today to Expiate Foul Murder.” Arkansas Democrat, July 25, 1902, p. 1, 3.

“State House.” Arkansas Democrat, July 9, 1902, p. 3.

“Two Condemned Men.” Arkansas Democrat, July 24, 1902, p. 5.

Untitled. Forrest City Times, June 13, 1902, p. 3, col. 4.

Mark K. Christ
Central Arkansas Library System