Law

Subcategories:
Clear

Entry Category: Law

Harris, Carleton

Carleton Harris was a lawyer and politician who was chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court during a tumultuous period in Arkansas political and judicial history. When he was elected to the court in 1956, Harris was the youngest chief justice in the nation; he served in the position for twenty-three years, longer than any other Arkansan except Griffin Smith, whose seat he filled upon the judge’s death and after the brief interim appointment of Lee Seamster. He was elected three times to the Arkansas House of Representatives, first when he was twenty-two years old, and he was elected to one term as prosecuting attorney, to eight years on the chancery bench, and to all or parts of four terms …

Harris, Gilbert (Lynching of)

On August 1, 1922, a mob of as many as 500 people broke into the Hot Springs (Garland County) jail and, brandishing guns, forcibly took a man and lynched him at the triangle in front of the Como Hotel located at the intersection of Central and Ouachita avenues. In his memoirs, Roswell Rigsby (1910–2001), an eyewitness to the lynching, stated, “I believe this was the last lynching in Hot Springs, at least in public.” There are some conflicting reports as to the first name of the man lynched. There are references to his first name being Punk, Bunk, and Gilbert; however, all accounts list his last name as Harris. Accounts of the hanging appeared in newspapers as far away as …

Harris, Jack (Lynching of)

On June 25, 1903, an African American man named Jack Harris was lynched in Clarendon (Monroe County) for allegedly attacking his employer, planter John A. Coburn. In 1900, Harris, a twenty-six-year-old bachelor, was living with his mother Ann in Monroe County and working as a farmer. The 1880 census indicates that Coburn, born in Searcy County in 1866, was living with his parents Arthur J. and Mary Elizabeth Hixon Coburn in White County. By 1894, he was in Monroe County, where he married Sallie D. Knight. Apparently on June 21, 1903, Harris rode one of Coburn’s mules without his permission. When Coburn asked him for an explanation, Harris allegedly struck him with a piece of timber, breaking one of his …

Harris, Oren

Oren Harris served as prosecuting attorney of Arkansas’s Thirteenth Judicial Circuit (1937–1940) and in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing the Fourth Congressional District from 1941 to 1953 and, following redistricting, the Seventh Congressional District from 1953 to 1966. Harris resigned his congressional seat in February 1966 after President Lyndon Johnson appointed him U.S. district judge for the Eastern and Western Districts of Arkansas. Although Harris took senior status with the court in 1976, he fulfilled his promise to work until “he couldn’t put his socks on” and carried a full docket of cases for two additional decades. Oren Harris was born on a farm in Belton (Hempstead County) on December 20, 1903, to Homer Harris and Bettie Bullock Harris, …

Harrison Race Riots of 1905 and 1909

aka: Charles Stinnett (Execution of)
Though nowhere near as murderous as other race riots across the state, the Harrison Race Riots of 1905 and 1909 drove all but one African American from Harrison (Boone County), creating by violence an all-white community similar to other such “sundown towns” in northern and western Arkansas. With the headquarters of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) located nearby, Harrison has retained the legacy of its ethnic cleansing, in terms of demographics and reputation, through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The U.S. Census of 1900 revealed a Black community in Harrison of 115 people out of 1,501 residents. This constituted a vibrant community that, despite its poverty, had a cohesive culture and deep roots. By all accounts, …

Harrison, John Henry (Lawsuits Relating to the Lynching of)

On February 3, 1922, an African American man named John Henry Harrison was lynched in Malvern (Hot Spring County) for allegedly harassing white women and girls. He had been arrested, taken to his victims for identification, and then jailed. Sheriff D. S. Bray, fearing mob violence, decided to take Harrison to the jail in Arkadelphia (Clark County) for safekeeping. Finding the roads out of town intentionally blocked by cars, he decided to travel by train instead. Bray, Harrison, and two deputies (S. J. Leiper and W. T. Gammel) boarded the train around 10:30 p.m., and Harrison was hidden under the seat in the “negro car.” According to the Malvern Daily Record, just as the train was beginning to leave, a …

Harrison, John Henry (Lynching of)

On February 3, 1922, an African-American man was lynched in Malvern (Hot Spring County) for allegedly harassing white women and girls. While a number of newspaper accounts, as well as a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) annual report, identify him by the name of Harry Harrison, and the Arkansas Gazette identified him as John Harris, research conducted in large part by the Hot Spring County Historical Society indicated that his name was John Henry Harrison. Harrison was living in Malvern at the time of the 1920 census; he was thirty-eight years old, married, and worked as a laborer in a lumber mill. He was a native of North Carolina and could both read and write. According …

Harrison, William M.

William M. Harrison was a Maryland-born lawyer who spent twelve years as an associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in its most tempestuous days—helping to settle the state of the law and the social order during and after the Civil War and Reconstruction. Arkansans during that period lived under governments created by four state constitutions, the charters of 1836, 1864, 1868, and 1874, which created a jungle of legal issues. Harrison entered that era as a Republican politician opposing secession but mutated into a Democrat when the minority Republicans lost power. He was sometimes a lonely voice on the court advocating for not punishing people who had to live and transact business in a state that had seceded from …

Hart, Jesse Cleveland

Jesse Cleveland Hart was appointed associate justice to the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1907 after the death of Justice James E. Riddick, who died of typhoid fever on October 9, 1907, while in office. Hart served as an associate justice until 1927, when he was appointed chief justice following the resignation of Chief Justice Edgar A. McCulloch. Hart served as chief justice until his death in 1933. Jesse C. Hart was born in a two-story log home near Dardanelle (Yell County) on July 25, 1864. Hart was the second of seven children of James E. Hart, who was a physician, and Sarah Stone, both pioneers of Yell County. His mother, a talented and educated woman whose own father was a …

Hart, Josephine Linker (Jo)

Josephine Linker (Jo) Hart, whose Cherokee parents were driven from their farm in Pope County when she was a child to make way for Lake Dardanelle, was inspired by that experience to study law, serving as a civil and criminal defense lawyer. She later became one of the first women to be elected to both Arkansas appellate courts and the first Native American to serve on the Arkansas Supreme Court. Jo Linker was born on November 20, 1943, at her grandmother’s home in Perryville (Perry County) but soon went to live with her parents on the farm near Russellville (Pope County). Gylem P. Linker and Leola Caldwell Linker raised cattle and grew vegetables that they sold to Atkins Pickle Company …

Hate Groups

Both the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) use the term “hate group” to describe any organization that espouses hostile attitudes toward members of racial, ethnic, and religious minority groups. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) includes people with disabilities and people with alternative lifestyles in the minority group category. Individuals who are affiliated with hate groups sometimes commit physical acts of violence or destroy property such as churches, synagogues, mosques, and other symbols associated with targeted minority groups. The historic base of white supremacist groups in the United States began with the post-Reconstruction Ku Klux Klan (KKK), which was actively involved in terrorist activities against African Americans and their supporters in the years following the …

Hawkins, Marlin Conover

Marlin Conover Hawkins served Conway County as an elected official for thirty-eight years. His ability to deliver votes to statewide and national candidates gave Hawkins a profile in state politics that was rare for a county official. His political machine is an important part of Arkansas’s political lore, and the effects of his political contacts are still evident in Conway County. Marlin Hawkins was born on April 22, 1913, near Center Ridge (Conway County) to John Carl Hawkins and Nettie Mae Hawkins. John Carl Hawkins, a sharecropper and part-time barber, died in 1929. As the second of seven children, part of the burden of supporting the family fell on Hawkins. He worked as a sharecropper and part-time janitor until Olen …

Hayden, Bud (Lynching of)

On June 3, 1898, Bud Hayden was lynched in Texarkana (Miller County) for allegedly assaulting twelve-year-old Jessie Scott, the daughter of the late James V. Scott, former circuit clerk. Although Hayden claimed to be twelve years old at the time, the authorities estimated his age to be at least eighteen. The Arkansas Gazette’s reports of the lynching were carried in newspapers across the country, including the Atlanta Constitution, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Herald. At the time of the 1880 census, J. V. Scott was living in Cut Off Township in Miller County. He was a twenty-four-year-old farmer living with his wife, Talitha, who was twenty. There was only one African-American family named Hayden in the county. …

Haynie, Gussie Faye

Gussie Haynie was one of Arkansas’s best-known woman lawyers in the late 1930s. She was pioneer in Arkansas in championing the rights of poor divorced women and destitute children. She was the first woman appointed a deputy prosecuting attorney and the first woman to hold an executive-level cabinet position in the state’s government, heading the Department of Public Welfare from 1937 to 1939. She sought to modernize the state’s welfare programs’ administration, including introducing civil service standards for personnel. She was abruptly removed from her position in 1939. Gussie Faye Haynie was born on June 13, 1901, in Pulaski County. (Her exact place of birth is not certain.) She was the older of two daughters of J. M. “Mike” Haynie …

Hays, Marion Steele

Steele Hays was a lawyer—and son of one of Arkansas’s most enduring and successful politicians—who spent the last fourteen years of his long legal career as a justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. His father, Brooks Hays, a Democratic congressman from Arkansas, was renowned in the post–World War II years for his moderation in the struggle over racial segregation in the South. Steele Hays was more avowedly liberal on race and other issues, dissenting alone from upholding the death sentence on every such case that came before the Supreme Court. Marion Steele Hays was born on March 25, 1925, in Little Rock (Pulaski County), one of two children of Brooks Hays and Marion Prather Hays. He was named after his mother …

Hearn, May (Lynching of)

May Hearn, a young white man in his twenties and the son of a farmer in Luxora (Mississippi County), was lynched in Osceola (Mississippi County) on April 6, 1901, for shooting and killing Clyde King “at a place of bad repute” on the night of March 31, 1901. The Arkansas Democrat noted that Hearn was the son of J. R. Hearn, “one of the most respected farmers living in the neighborhood of Luxora” and a longtime magistrate of the town. May Hearn, however, played the role of the wayward son; as the Osceola Times wrote: “When sober, May Hearn is said to be quiet and peaceable, but when under the influence of Luxora whiskey, all the treachery and blood-thirstiness of …

Hellom (Lynching of)

In late September 1903, an African-American man named Hellom was hanged by a black mob in Mississippi County for allegedly assaulting two young girls. Census records for the year 1900 reveal that there were three black men in Mississippi County who might have been the victim of the mob. All lived in nearby households in Fletcher Township, and all had a similar surname. The first was Oscar Hullum, age twenty-five, who was working as a farm hand and boarding with Brady and Mary Randolph. The second was Will Hellum, age twenty-three, a farm worker who was living nearby with his wife, Lucy, and their son, Jonathan. Living with them was a brother-in law, Arthur Hullum, age twenty-two, and three other …

Helton, Kit (Execution of)

Kit Helton was hanged on March 7, 1902, for murdering his wife—the first of three executions conducted at Van Buren (Crawford County) in 1902. Kit Helton, fifty-five, was a farmer living with his wife Ella near Lancaster (Crawford County). Helton suspected his wife was having an affair with Justice of the Peace John O’Kelley. On September 28, 1901, Helton rode to O’Kelley’s house and paid him fifty cents he owed him over some business. Helton said, “That settles our fruit deal; I will also settle another score with you,” before pulling a pistol and shooting him in the abdomen. Initial reports said O’Kelley was killed, but he survived his wounds. Helton then rode home and called his wife out of …

Hembree, Lathe (Execution of)

Lathe Hembree was hanged on July 25, 1902, at Center Point (Howard County) for a murder he denied committing. He was one of six men executed on the same date in Arkansas. On March 1, 1900, W. M. Willis, an inspector and paymaster for the Hammond-Signor Tie Company, was found shot to death on the Pee Gee Road five miles south of Mena (Polk County). Circumstantial evidence led investigators to arrest Lathe Hembree, a white man, for the crime. He was tried in Mena and convicted of first-degree murder on March 17 after the jury deliberated “only one hour.” He was sentenced to hang on May 18. Hembree’s lawyers appealed the conviction, and the Arkansas Supreme Court delayed the execution, …

Hemingway, Wilson Edwin

Wilson E. Hemingway was an influential figure in Arkansas’s legal community in the later part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century, including brief service on the Arkansas Supreme Court. As an attorney, judge, and corporate leader, he had a sizable impact on Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Arkansas politics, law, and business. Wilson Edwin Hemingway was born on January 4, 1854, in Carrollton, Mississippi, to William Hemingway and Sarah Wesley Jenkins Hemingway. He grew up in Mississippi and spent two years at the University of Mississippi before spending another two at the University of Georgia. He does not appear to have earned a degree from either school. Hemingway taught school from 1872 to 1873, while also …

Henley, Jesse Smith

Jesse Smith Henley presided over a number of desegregation cases but was most noted for reforming the state prison system and being the first federal judge in the country to declare an entire state penitentiary in violation of the Eighth Amendment. J. Smith Henley was born on May 18, 1917, in St. Joe (Searcy County) into a family of lawyers. He had an older brother named Ben and a sister named Wordna (or Wardna). Far from a model student, Henley never formally graduated from high school and seems to have been thrown out of college once. However, he did earn his law degree at the University of Arkansas School of Law in Fayetteville (Washington County) in 1941. He practiced law …

Hensen, Elias (Lynching of)

Elias Hensen was seized from a house and shot to death on March 12, 1879, in Clay County after testifying against a co-defendant in a horse-stealing case and preparing to testify against other members of his gang. The 1870 federal census lists Elias Hensen, born around 1852, as an illiterate farmhand working for Abraham Roberts in Randolph County’s Current River Township, and it indicates that he might have had a diminished mental capacity. By 1879, he apparently was working with the Montgomery Brothers gang and had earned a reputation as a “rather unsavory character in this neighborhood, and was accused of various thefts, horse-stealing among them,” according to the Clay County Courier. Hensen and an accomplice, Charley Jenkins, were arrested …

Henslee, Lee

Lee Henslee was the longest-serving superintendent of the Arkansas prison system. He was appointed head of the state penitentiary in 1949 by Governor Sid McMath and served in that position until 1963. Henslee received praise from Governor Orval Faubus, but he was superintendent in a time when abuse and corruption at the prisons were rampant. Lee Henslee was born on September 4, 1903, on a family farm five miles east of Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). He was one of three children born to Edward Anderson Henslee (1863–1949), a native of Mississippi, and Clara Belle Treadwell Henslee (1874–1963), a native of Arkansas. Lee Henslee grew up in Pine Bluff. He married Mississippi native Mary Alcorn (1902–1990) on August 22, 1924, in …

Herrig, William (Lynching of)

William Herrig, a white man described in news reports as “a well-to-do farmer 67 years old” was lynched in Clay County by vigilantes on December 29, 1887, for murdering his young wife and a man with whom she was apparently friendly. No William Herrig was living in Clay County by the time of the 1880s census, although other men of that name were living in various places in the United States at the time, all of them German immigrants. Herrig’s wife, whose maiden name was Julia Bennett (and who is also dubbed “Mrs. Nettie” in reports), was described as “a charmingly plump little 20-years-of-age wife” who “had been for the two years before her marriage an actress in the Pauline …

Hickman, Darrell David

Darrell David Hickman spent almost twenty-two years as a trial-court judge and justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court. Hickman, who grew up in Searcy (White County), was first elected chancery judge in a district that stretched to Little Rock (Pulaski County) and was elected twice to the Arkansas Supreme Court before retiring in 1990 to follow the seasons and travel from the Canadian Rockies to Mexico and back. He soon returned to Searcy and the town of Pangburn (White County), where he served two more stints as a chancery or circuit judge. Hickman had a propensity for issuing convulsive orders, such as when he declared the Constitutional Convention of 1975 unconstitutional, and for writing colorful opinions, such as when he …

Hicks, Robert (Lynching of)

In late November 1921, a young African-American man named Robert Hicks was lynched near Lake Village (Chicot County) for writing a letter to an eighteen-year-old white woman. While the identity of the woman remains a mystery, Hicks was probably the same Robert Hicks who was living with his mother, Minnie, in the household of his stepfather, Henry Singleton, in South Charlton Township of Chicot County in 1910. At that time, he was eight years old. In 1920, at eighteen, he was still in South Charlton Township working on a cotton farm owned by his uncle, Jessie E. Cooper. While newspaper reports put his age at twenty-three or twenty-five, the census information shows that he was only nineteen at the time …

Hilderbrand, Joe

As a fugitive from Arkansas justice in the 1960s, Joe Hilderbrand gained notoriety and even a measure of national acclaim by evading a horde of lawmen with airplanes and bloodhounds who chased him and a girlfriend through the wilds of the Ozark Mountains after he failed to return to Cummins Prison Farm from a furlough to visit his ailing father. It was one of the largest manhunts in Arkansas history. Legends accrued around the mountaineer—that he was innocent of any serious crime and a scapegoat for incompetent and embarrassed law enforcement agencies. Life magazine did a piece on Hilderbrand and the young woman, Frances Standridge, who helped him evade the posses. At least four ballads were written about Hilderbrand and …