Truel Thomas “T. T.” Lee (1877–1936)

Beginning on November 21, 1919, and into the next month, at least eighty newspapers across the country ran an erroneous story from the Associated Press (AP) that T. T. Lee had been “taken away from officials and lynched near the Arkansas-Missouri line” on November 20, 1919. Some, including Lee’s hometown newspaper, the Des Moines Register, added the fictional detail that he was a “Negro.” The AP reported the day after its original story that he was in fact not dead but safely in jail in Mountain Home, but it was too late. As the Yellville (Marion County) Mountain Echo put it, the lynching was “absolutely false.” The tale of a fictitious lynching spread faster than any correction ever did, although a few newspapers printed retractions, especially Arkansas newspapers such as the Helena World.

On November 13, 1919, real estate and railroad promoter Kleo V. Loba was shot and killed at home near Cotter (Baxter County). The prime suspect in the murder was Truel Thomas Lee, a white man born in Iowa who was a sometime-inventor (having patented a button fastener). In 1914 and 1915, Loba had tried to connect the Frisco Railroad to Mountain Home (Baxter County), but World War I put a stop to that. Around then, Lee partnered with Loba, but Loba ended the partnership in November 1917. Loba continued promoting Baxter County for real estate investments, while Lee allegedly “threatened to get even [with Loba]…if it took a lifetime.” (The Chicago Defender article mistakenly turned this business dispute about real estate development into a sharecropping dispute, saying that they “had quarreled over the disposition of crops and the proportionate share to be received by each.”) Lee allegedly put an end to Loba’s aspirations by using a Marlin rifle to shoot him in the back through the window. When Lee was arrested in Springfield, Missouri, he had “a .38 pistol, wrapped in rags, a false face, a false mustache, a telescope, pistol and Winchester shells.” He was transported to the Arkansas state penitentiary pending trial.

“[T]wenty-five citizens hanged [Lee] to a tree,” as described in an anonymous “long distance telephone message” to Fort Smith (Sebastian County). The AP could not confirm the story because Baxter County lacked “railway lines and all telephone offices close at 8 o’clock” but ran it anyway. (So Loba’s failure to bring the railroad to Baxter County inadvertently played a role in spreading the rumor of Lee’s untimely death.) The story claimed that the Baxter County sheriff was worried about “mob sentiment” when he and Lee were leaving Springfield for Little Rock (Pulaski County). The Chicago Defender, a Black newspaper with a national readership, explicitly tied Lee’s purported lynching to Jordan Jameson’s horrific lynching in Magnolia (Columbia County) earlier in November, adding more details not in the AP story: Lee’s body was “riddled…with bullets” and the lynchers “clipped souvenirs from the dead man’s body and exhibited them”—which is hard to accomplish with no body.

In March 1920, Lee was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the sentence in July. In January 1921, after petitions from the jurors and other Baxter County citizens, Governor Charles Hillman Brough pardoned him, saying that he believed Lee was innocent. According to a report in the January 11, 1921, Batesville Daily Guard eleven of the jurors had written to Brough to recommend the pardon, saying that, during the original trial, they had all voted for acquittal, while one juror voted for the death penalty and eventually “induced the others to vote for a verdict of guilty by promising to circulate a petition for pardon which he afterwards declined to do.”

Lee moved back to Iowa, where he died in 1936.

For additional information:
“Arkansas Mob Still at Work: Another Black Page Added to America’s Civilization Record.” Chicago Defender, November 29, 1919, p. 1.

“Alleged Murderer Hanged at Cotter: White Man, Caught After a Long Chase, Taken from Officers by a Mob.” Arkansas Gazette, November 21, 1919, p. 1.

“Alleged Slayer of Loba Captured at Springfield.” Mountain Echo, November 27, 1919, p. 1.

“Arkansas Posse Lynches Negro.” (Decatur, Illinois) Herald and Review, November 21, 1919, p. 11.

“Brough Granted Pardon.” Batesville Daily Guard, January 11, 1921, p. 3.

“Jayhawkers Pay Us a Short Visit: K. V. Loba Brings in Carload from Wichita.” Baxter Bulletin, September 7, 1917, p. 1.

“Lee, Alleged Slayer of Loba, Is Captured.” Douglas County (Missouri) Herald, November 20, 1919, p. 1.

“Lee Must Serve Life Sentence.” Arkansas Democrat, March 19, 1920, p. 2.

Lee v. State, 145 Ark. 75 (July 5, 1920). https://books.google.com/books?id=Cfg2AQAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=t%20t%20lee%20loba%20arkansas%20supreme%20court%201920&pg=PA79#v=onepage&q=t%20t%20lee%20loba%20arkansas%20supreme%20court%201920&f=false (accessed February 12, 2025).

“Location Notices Filed.” (Fort Benton, Montana) River Press, March 4, 1908, p. 3.

“Negro Lynched by Mob: Man Charged with Killing Farmer Taken from Officers.” Des Moines Register, November 21, 1919, p. 1.

“No Lynching Says Sheriff.” (Helena) Daily World, November 21, 1919, p. 1.

“Notice.” Baxter Bulletin, November 9, 1917, p. 4.

“Posse in Search of Murderer.” Douglas County (Missouri) Herald, November 20, 1919, p. 1.

“Report Lynching: Negro Killed in Arkansas, According to Message.” (Pittsburg, Kansas) Sun, November 21, 1919, p. 3.

“T. T. Lee, Convicted of Murder, Is Given Pardon by Gov. Brough.” Baxter Bulletin, January 14, 1921, p. 1.

“Truel T. Lee (1877–1936).” Find a Grave.com. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/21241876/truel-t-lee (accessed February 12, 2025).

“Williams to Chair; Lee Sent Up for Life.” Baxter Bulletin, March 19, 1920, p. 1.

Lisa Childs
Fayetteville, Arkansas