March 20, 1902

African-American political leader and businessman Green Walter Thompson died. He was returning home at around midnight from a meeting when an assailant killed him with an ax as he stabled his horses. Although family members initially were charged, no one was convicted. Thompson had won his first elective office while still in his twenties. In 1875, he was elected the Sixth Ward alderman on the Little Rock City Council. He served for eighteen years, a record tenure for African Americans that was not surpassed for almost a century. But as the Gilded Age gave way to the more strident 1890s, Thompson and other black politicians battled discrimination, segregation, and disfranchisement. The warm relationship between black citizens and the Republican Party slowly degenerated.