Entry Type: Event

McCurtain, Amos (Execution of)

Amos McCurtain was a Choctaw man hanged at Van Buren (Crawford County) on June 24, 1870, for a double murder in what would be the first public execution in Crawford County since the end of the Civil War. Amos McCurtain and William Fry, another Choctaw man, were traveling by wagon between Scullyville and Boggy Depot in the Indian Territory on September 7, 1869, when they encountered a wagon driven by James McClain, who was Choctaw, and James Blakely, a Black man. McCurtain and Fry stopped to camp for the night, and the other two men stopped and camped near them. As McClain and Blakely slept, McCurtain proposed killing the pair and stealing the goods from their wagon. Fry opposed the …

McDonald (Lynching of)

A pair of Marion County men were shot as suspected horse thieves on Christmas Day of 1870 by a trio of vigilantes from Springfield, Missouri. A man named McDonald was killed in the incident. According to a short article in the January 25, 1871, Arkansas Gazette, three men from Springfield “named Patterson, and Dodson, and a third, name unknown,” rode into Marion County in pursuit of a stolen horse. Once in the county, they apprehended a man named Otterbury, and while one vigilante guarded him, the other two detained a man named McDonald “whom they also accused as being one of their thieves.” After “some altercation,” the Missourians shot the two men after Otterbury “attempted to resist.” McDonald died of …

McGehee Lynching of 1894

On September 22, 1894, Luke Washington, Richard Washington, and Henry C. Robinson were lynched in McGehee (Desha County) for allegedly murdering local merchant H. C. Patton and robbing his store. One of the interesting aspects of this case is that the African-American population of McGehee (then known as McGehee Junction) reportedly took an active part in the three men’s lynching. On September 20, 1894, Patton locked his store, which was located on the edge of a cotton field some distance from the depot in McGehee, and proceeded along the walkway to his bedroom. There, Robinson and the two Washingtons allegedly killed him with a club. Although Patton was armed with a pistol, he was unable to use it in time. His attackers then …

McGraw’s Mill, Skirmish at

During the winter of 1862–1863, Union sympathizers avoiding Confederate conscription officers fled their homes throughout western Arkansas and hid in the Ouachita Mountains, where they joined Confederate deserters. These bands stole supplies from the local population. Civilians in the area were uneasy with this development and urged the Confederate government to act. One of these bands was led by Andy Brown—who was called “Captain”—of Arkadelphia (Clark County). Brown’s band had eighty-three members and was most active in the Ouachita Mountains northwest of Arkadelphia, stealing horses and wagons from nearby civilians. In response to these events, a group of mounted and armed civilians organized in Arkadelphia under the command of Lieutenant Colonel William A. Crawford. Divided into two companies, the men …

McGuire’s, Affair at

A reconnaissance raid, this engagement saw Federal forces charging into the midst of an enemy encampment before withdrawing. Although the skirmish involved a daring attack, neither side reported any casualties. Major Thomas Hunt commanded part of the First Arkansas Cavalry (US) stationed in Fayetteville (Washington County) in October 1863. The Federals knew that Confederate units under the command of Colonel William Brooks were operating in the area, and Hunt estimated that the enemy numbered around 1,000. The Union troops in the area numbered approximately 500. On October 11, Hunt received a demand for surrender of the town and his command from Brooks. Hunt replied that he would not surrender without a fight and immediately reinforced his picket posts and sent …

McIntyre, Samuel (Lynching of)

On April 23, 1919, an African-American man named Sam McIntyre was hanged near Forrest City (St. Francis County) for allegedly murdering another black man, John Johnson, the previous February. According to the February 10, 1919, edition of the Arkansas Gazette, on February 6, Johnson was shot through the window while playing checkers with a friend at his home on the Graham farm. McIntyre was arrested after the killing, along with U. L. “Hub” Lancaster (a white man) and Rube McGee (a black man). According to the report, “Johnson was a witness against Lancaster and McIntyre in several liquor cases, one case of assault to kill and another case charging burglary and grand larceny.” He was to testify when the case …

McKee, William (Execution of)

William F. McKee was executed on May 26, 1837, for the murder of his brother’s brother-in-law, though he continually proclaimed his innocence, blaming his brother for the crime. Buford P. Scott was shot in the back on December 24, 1836, near his father’s home about twelve miles from Little Rock (Pulaski County), the fatal bullet entering his back to the left of his spinal column and exiting his chest. Two brothers, William and Alexander McKee, were arrested the next day and charged with Scott’s murder. At their trial on April 13, 1837, a parade of witnesses testified that William McKee had a history of conflict with Scott, whose sister Catherine was married to Alexander McKee, with several recounting threats William McKee …

McLendon, Will (Reported Lynching of)

In many cases, newspapers across the country published reports on lynchings, which were then listed in books and other resources. In some cases, even though subsequent reports indicated that the lynching had not happened, initial accounts were not corrected. Such was the case with an African American man, Will McLendon of Woodruff County, who was reportedly lynched in August 1893. In his 1993 dissertation, citing an August 6 report in the Memphis Appeal Avalanche, historian Richard Buckelew commented on this presumed lynching, which he dated at August 5. In her 1894 book A Red Record, Ida Wells Barnett gave the date of the lynching as August 9. It seems, however, that McLendon actually died in jail in Newport (Jackson County) …

McNeil, Sharpe (Lynching of)

According to the Arkansas Gazette’s coverage of the affair, on the night of January 18, 1881, a mob of about 100 men assembled at the jail in Star City (Lincoln County) for the purposes of lynching a white man named Sharpe McNeil, who had been charged with the murder of Dr. E. U. G. Anderson. The mob “surprised the jailor, put him under arrest, and proceeded to the jail, where they forced open the doors and took out the man.” The mob took McNeil “to the outskirts of the town, where he was found riddled with bullets.” The brief report in the January 20, 1881, Gazette ends by noting: “The people of Star City are much excited over the affair.” …

McWhorter, Dave (Execution of)

Dave McWhorter was hanged on July 25, 1902, for murdering his wife. His was the second of three executions conducted at Van Buren (Crawford County) in 1902 and one of six on the same date in Arkansas. Dave McWhorter (called Thomas in some news reports), described as a “remarkably well preserved man of 59 years old,” had been wed to his wife Mary for about a year when they quarreled and he left her. On November 15, 1901, he went to her home near Mulberry (Crawford County) and asked her to take him back, but she “said she was done with him.” She and her two children headed to the fields to pick cotton as McWhorter continued to plead with …

Memphis Tennessee to Marion, Expedition from

The January 19–22, 1865, expedition from Memphis, Tennessee, to Marion (Crittenden County) was undertaken to disrupt Confederate operations in northeastern Arkansas. Colonel Herman Lieb, assistant inspector general for the Union Department of Mississippi, and Lieutenant Colonel Otto Funke of the Eleventh Illinois Cavalry organized a force of 400 cavalrymen to cross the Mississippi River from Memphis and attack Confederate forces in Crittenden County. That number was reduced to 310 men because one of the steamboats to ferry them was too small to carry 200 horses. The Seventh Indiana and Second Wisconsin Cavalry Regiments boarded the John Baine, while elements of the Fourth and Eleventh Illinois Cavalry embarked on the steamer Belle Peoria. Lieb had information that Colonel Oliver P. Lyles’s …

Memphis, Tennessee, into Southeast Arkansas and Northeast Louisiana, Expedition from

A sizable Union expedition set out from Memphis, Tennessee, on January 26, 1865, to drive off Confederate guerrillas attacking Union shipping from the west bank of the Mississippi River in southern Arkansas and northeastern Louisiana. Led by Colonel Embury D. Osband of the Third U.S. Colored Cavalry (USCC), the expedition encompassed 2,621 cavalrymen from Indiana, Illinois, Mississippi, New York, and Wisconsin regiments and the Third USCC, traveling on fourteen steamboats. They disembarked at Eunice (Chicot County) in the early morning of January 28 and then began heading inland “through an almost impassible swamp.” The expedition seized horses and mules and burned “a large steam grist-mill which was in the employ of the Confederate Government,” along with a supply depot near …

Mercer, William (Lynching of)

William Mercer was apparently shot to death in 1898 by a Cleburne County lynch mob that found him after weeks of searching as he hid in the mountains after murdering his daughter. William Mercer (called Messer in some articles) was accused by his daughter of having committed “a revolting crime,” and in February 1898, she “mysteriously disappeared.” A local judge issued a warrant for his arrest, but he had already fled when lawmen went to serve the warrant on March 8, 1898. Few details are available outside of what appeared in short newspaper articles that appeared around the country. Those articles, datelined Little Rock (Pulaski County) on April 3, 1898, indicate that Mercer killed his daughter earlier in the year. …

Mexican War

aka: U.S.-Mexican War
aka: Mexican-American War
The Mexican War was triggered by American expansionism and President James K. Polk’s desire to annex the Republic of Texas as a state. As a frontier state, Arkansas was called upon early to supply troops after war against Mexico had been declared on May 13, 1846. By war’s end, about 1,500 Arkansans had served, and Senator Ambrose Sevier of Arkansas had helped settle the peace. With Texas’s victory over Mexican general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s troops in 1836, the former Mexican territory became an independent republic. For a decade, U.S. leaders had seen Texas’s independence as a first step to it joining the United States, part of a broader American view of “Manifest Destiny.” Mexico, however, never recognized Texas’s …

Militia Wars of 1868–1869

A series of conflicts fought across the state in the aftermath of the Civil War, the Militia Wars were a response to the wave of violence that swept Arkansas after the adoption of the Constitution of 1868. With the capture of Little Rock (Pulaski County) by Federal forces in 1863, Isaac Murphy was selected as the provisional governor of the state, taking office in March 1864. With little influence beyond the capital and other isolated Union outposts, Murphy was unable to consolidate his power before the end of the war. In 1866, almost the entire Unionist state government was defeated for reelection. However, Murphy and the secretary of state, who were serving four-year terms that expired in 1868, survived. The …

Mills, Lee (Execution of)

aka:
Lee Mills was hanged at Heber Springs (Cleburne County) on September 16, 1898, for a murder and robbery in Van Buren County. His accomplice, Will H. Hardin, was murdered in his jail cell in Clinton (Van Buren County) on April 17, 1899. Mills and Hardin—the latter a former deputy sheriff—both of whom lived near Scotland (Van Buren County), rode to the home of Hugh Patterson on Culpepper Mountain about six miles southwest of Clinton on the evening of December 13, 1897, intending to rob him of between $1,000 and $1,800 believed to be in his house. Patterson’s son Jim, Jim’s wife Rebecca and their five children, and Patterson’s brother William James Patterson were also at the house when the robbers …

Miss Arkansas Pageant

The Miss Arkansas Pageant officially began in 1939, though two competitions before that year set the stage for the pageant. The pageant is Arkansas’s preliminary for the Miss America Pageant, which began in 1921. Forty-five smaller pageants lead up to the crowning of Miss Arkansas. The competition is managed by a non-profit organization and co-sponsored by the Miss Arkansas Scholarship Foundation, Inc. The first winner of the pageant was Vivian Ferguson. However, she was later disqualified for being married, and the competition was halted until 1938, when the winner was Lorene Bailey. The next year, for the first time, the winner of the pageant was sent to compete in the Miss America pageant, thus marking the official beginning of the Miss …

Mississippi County Executions of 1880

A pair of African American men were hanged for the crime of murder at Osceola (Mississippi County) on July 9, 1880, in the first legal public execution in Mississippi County. Armstead Penn of Memphis, Tennessee, was picking cotton in Mississippi County in late 1879 when he befriended George Sanford and Richard McKee, two local Black men. On November 26, 1879, they murdered Penn, “falling upon their victim in a lonely and unfrequented place.” They first shot him in the back, then smashed his skull with a club and “finished and made certain the devilish deed by cutting his throat.” The two men stole about forty dollars from their victim. Penn’s body was found in a wooded area ten or twelve …

Mississippi River Lynching of 1841

In August 1841, a number of suspected counterfeiters were reportedly rounded up along the Mississippi River and drowned by a group of Arkansas vigilantes. The first report of the event places the number killed at twenty-three, while noting that the vigilantes were continuing to target people. Subsequent reports place the number “either drowned or shot” as high as seventy-five. The first report of this affair appears in the August 15, 841, Times-Picayune of New Orleans, Louisiana, which cites as the source an unnamed person “who arrived in the city yesterday from Arkansas.” According to this person’s account, the violence occurred between August 5 and 10 in both southern Phillips County, some forty miles below Helena (Phillips County), and Coahoma County, …

Mitchell v. Globe International Publishing

aka: People's Bank and Trust Company of Mountain Home v. Globe International Publishing
Mitchell v. Globe International Publishing, Inc. 978 F. 2nd 1065 was a legal case involving First Amendment freedom of the press, as well as privacy issues. It originated in a lawsuit filed by ninety-six-year-old Nellie Mitchell, a native of Mountain Home (Baxter County). Mitchell sued Globe International, the publisher of the tabloid paper the Sun, for false light invasion of privacy after the paper published a photograph of her to illustrate one of its articles. When the jury returned a verdict in favor of Mitchell and awarded her a total of $1.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages, Globe appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which upheld the verdict. A final effort to appeal to …

Mitchell v. United States

Mitchell v. United States et al., 313 U.S. 80 (1941), came on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging discriminatory treatment of railroad accommodations for African-American passengers on interstate train coaches passing through Arkansas, where a state law demanded segregation of races but equivalent facilities. The Supreme Court had held in earlier cases that it was adequate under the Fourteenth Amendment for separate privileges to be supplied to differing groups of people as long as they were treated similarly well. Originating in Arkansas in April 1937, the suit worked its way through the regulatory and legal system, finally ending up on the calendar of the Supreme Court in 1941. The circumstances surrounding the matter began after the only African American …

Mitchell, Charles (Lynching of)

On November 2, 1884, Charles Mitchell was murdered near Richmond (Little River County) for the alleged murder of a prominent farmer’s wife, Kate Waddell. The incident made news not only in Arkansas, but also in Texas, the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), and Michigan. At the time of the 1880 census, forty-year-old Charley Mitchell—an African-American or biracial man—was living in Johnson Township of Little River County with his wife, Isabella, and their two sons, William (thirteen) and Mitchel (eleven). The census lists no occupation for Mitchell, but his two sons were working as servants. According to an October 31 article in the Arkansas Gazette, Mrs. Waddell, “an estimable woman,” was murdered on October 29 “by a notorious negro by the name …

Mitchell, Elton (Lynching of)

On June 13, 1918, an African-American farm worker named Elton Mitchell (referred to in some reports as Allen Mitchell) was hanged by a mob in Earle (Crittenden County). Newspaper reports give different dates for Mitchell’s murder, including June 22, June 13, and June 14, but the Pine Bluff Daily Graphic reported on June 14 that the murder took place on Thursday, June 13, so that is the most probable date. Mitchell’s personal history is a bit confusing, with public records placing him in several adjacent counties in northeastern Arkansas and northwestern Mississippi. At the time of the 1900 census there was an Etten Mitchell, age ten, living in Tyronza (Poinsett County) with his parents, Andrew and Parthenia Mitchell, and five …

Moffatt, Columbus (Execution of)

Columbus William Moffatt (sometimes spelled as Moffat or Moffett) was hanged on April 24, 1885, in Dallas (Polk County) for the murder of a local farmer, a crime he denied to the last moments of his life. Sources differ as whether Moffatt was white or African American. Bell Weehunt, a prominent local farmer, was working on his Polk County farm on June 17, 1882, when, as the Arkansas Democrat reported, J. B. Fowler and Columbus Moffatt “secreted themselves behind the fence and shot him through the heart while at work in the field” before going to his home and robbing his wife. The two were quickly apprehended, and Moffatt confessed that Fowler “worked on me for two weeks before I …

Monroe County Lynching of 1893

In January 1893, five men were lynched in Monroe County near Cotton Plant (Woodruff County) for allegedly murdering Reuben Atkinson, his housekeeper, and her child, and then torching Atkinson’s house to cover up the crimes. Census and other public records yield no information on either Atkinson or his alleged murderers. According to the Arkansas Gazette, on January 7 a “prosperous farmer” named Rube Atkinson went to sell his cotton. He returned to his farm on January 8, and the following morning neighbors awoke to find that Atkinson’s house had burned down. When they went to inspect, they found three bodies in the ruins, which were later identified as those of Atkinson, his housekeeper, and her child. Authorities arrested several African …

Monroe County Lynching of 1915

aka: H. M. Gandy (Lynching of)
aka: Jeff Mansell (Lynching of)
On February 27, 1915, two pearl fishermen—H. M. Gandy (sometimes referred to as Candy) and Jeff Mansell—were lynched near Indian Bay, located on the eastern bank of the White River in Monroe County. Both men were white. Most lynching victims in Arkansas’s history were black, but this incident is reminiscent of pre–Civil War days in Arkansas when vigilante justice was often meted out to white criminals. Records reveal nothing about either Gandy or Mansell. According to the Arkansas Gazette, they were fishermen and pearl hunters and lived in cabin boats on the river near Indian Bay. Although the killings occurred in Monroe County, the men’s boats were moored across the river near St. Charles (Arkansas County). They and their families …

Monticello Road, Skirmish at (May 16, 1865)

  Even with the surrender of most of the military units of the Confederacy, the Civil War continued in Arkansas during the spring and early summer of 1865. Many of the southern units in the state were no longer organized and operated to the best of their abilities. Soldiers at Federal outposts throughout the state continued to hunt down these enemy fighters, and this skirmish is an example of one such action. On May 15, 1865, Captain John Norris of Company M, Thirteenth Illinois Cavalry led a scout of thirty men from Pine Bluff (Jefferson County). The patrol started quietly and moved past several farms to determine if the enemy was present in the area. A local farmer’s wife reported …

Monticello, Skirmish at (May 24, 1865)

  In mid-1865, after four years of conflict, the Civil War was finally coming to a close. But Confederate troops still operated in southeastern Arkansas. This skirmish was part of the effort to get these troops to surrender to Union forces and thus conclude the war in the state. On May 23, 1865, Captain John Norris of the Thirteenth Illinois Cavalry departed Pine Bluff (Jefferson County) with sixty men. Once outside of the city, he split his force into two groups. Taking different roads, the two parts of the unit rejoined that night about thirty miles from Pine Bluff. The Federals continued to patrol the countryside the next day before entering Monticello (Drew County) around sunset. Encountering the enemy for …

Monticello, Skirmish at (September 11, 1864)

  After the Camden Expedition in the spring of 1864, Confederate forces were primarily based in southern and eastern Arkansas. Union forces in the state continued to gather intelligence from their bases in Little Rock (Pulaski County) and Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), as well as other locations. This skirmish occurred when a Federal column from Pine Bluff stumbled into a large unit of Confederate troops in the Monticello (Drew County) area. On the morning of September 9, 1864, under orders from Brigadier General Powell Clayton, Colonel Albert Erskine departed Pine Bluff with 300 men. Erskine and his men scouted in the direction of Monticello. That night, the command camped about fourteen miles from Monticello. Approaching the town early the next …