Legends of the Old West - FRANK HAMER Ep. 2 | “Lynch Mobs”

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

Early in Frank’s career, his Ranger unit deals with racial violence in East Texas. Frank uses patience, quick thinking, and courage to outwit lynch mobs. Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Fortnite created to give players of all ages, including kids and families, a safe digital space to play in. Download Fortnite on consoles, PC, cloud services, or Android and play Lego Fortnite for free. Rated ESRB E10+. It was a July night in 1908. Like every other summer night in Jefferson County, Texas, the air was thick.

A group of men tramped through the swamp outside Beaumont, 85 miles east of Houston. They saw one another by their lanterns and the gleams of their guns. They were hunting tonight. They were looking for a man named Claude Golden. His record held that he was a repeat sexual offender. Eyewitness accounts placed him at the scene of a recent assault of a young girl. Ordinarily, a sheriff or a marshal would handle a case like this, maybe one ranger, but tonight was different. Claude was a black man, and the girl in question was white. Claude had been arrested, and when word got out that he was being transferred out of town, a crowd decided to intervene. Hundreds of armed white townspeople assembled in a couple hours,

but Claude couldn't be found. The mob knew that Claude and the lawmen who were escorting him were out here in the swamp somewhere. It had been hours, and they still hadn't found the suspect. They swept the area, peeking behind trees and logs. Their shoes sank deep into the marshy ground. But what they had missed was that Claude and his escorts, led by Frank Hamer, had been crawling through that same swamp, hiding just inches from their feet.

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Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash realm. All lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash r-e-a-l-m now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash realm. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling a four-part story about the historic career of Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. This is Episode 2, Lynch Mobs. In May of 1907, about a year after Frank became a Texas Ranger, he received new orders. His company, Company C, commanded by Captain John Rogers,

was to relocate from Alpine, Texas in the western part of the state to Austin. From their new home base in the capital, Rogers and his company had a new jurisdiction. They were now to keep order in East Texas. It was a whole new environment, and Frank had never been there before. The hill country of Frank's youth was dry. There was land and grass for grazing, but the earth itself was hard in many places. It was rocky and lined with caves. East Texas was something different altogether. It was humid, lush, and green, and it made its money from timber and cotton.

There was shipping, too, down south toward Houston and Galveston. Its makeup was also different. The hill country was a big mix of all kinds of people. There were Black Texans, Mexicans, Tejanos, Comanches, Apaches, and members of other tribes. There were Germans, Czechs, and Poles. There were Scotch, Irish, and English, too, like the Hamers. But in East Texas, for the most part, it was Black and White. The Black population in East Texas were mostly the children and grandchildren of former slaves. When slavery had finally been abolished during the Civil War, many newly freed slaves in East Texas stayed in East Texas.

And as they remained, so did the same inequalities. Suspicion and hostility between the races often turned deadly, and Frank saw some of it up close and personal. He was sent multiple times to little towns in the East. Sometimes the violence went beyond what sheriffs and marshals could handle. It had been common practice since the 1890s to call in the rangers to fend off lynch mobs, and the violence scared businesses in town.

The Trinity Lumber Company had an operation outside the town of Groveton. The company was building a logging railroad, and they had contracted some of the labor to black workers. Local white workers objected. One white man in particular, Charles Mossington, began threatening the black workers. Mossington told them to leave, but a contract was a contract. The black workers stayed.

Tensions rose, and work on the railroad halted. The company called for the Rangers, and in September, the Rangers arrived. Frank and another Ranger were dispatched to investigate. Eventually, they obtained a warrant for Mossington, and he was arrested, and work on the railroad resumed. It had been a lower-stakes dispatch, but it was just the beginning of Frank's time in East Texas. Soon enough, he'd be orchestrating and pulling off great escapes.

A few months later, in the fall of 1907, the Rangers of Company C received one of their first major assignments in East Texas. Doc Bailey was a black man who had been charged with murder. He'd shot another man, D.G. Owens, in a gambling spat in Nacogdoches. After dragging Owens' body into the woods, Bailey fled to Rusk, 35 miles away, where he was arrested. Bailey had confessed, and now he had to appear in court. But the white population of Nacogdoches wanted to take matters into its own hands. The rangers were sent to ensure that Bailey made it safely to the courthouse to stand trial. The situation was already boiling by the time the Rangers arrived. There was a mob, and it was led by A.J. Spradley, the former sheriff of Nacogdoches County.

Spradley was well-known and well-trusted. He'd been the sheriff for 25 years. But now he was out, and he was the one leading the violence outside the law. Captain Rogers knew this would be hairy. The Rangers had a fearsome reputation, but sending one or two wouldn't be enough to hold off an organized lynch mob. This called for a whole posse. That posse comprised Roger's own company, including Frank and the sheriffs of Nacogdoches and Cherokee counties. It was 11 men

altogether. They collected Doc Bailey and Rusk, boarded a train, and traveled to Nacogdoches. When they arrived, there was a large crowd waiting at the station, eager to get its hands on the accused. But the sight of 11 armed lawmen was enough for now. The mob didn't try anything, and the posse escorted Bailey to the county jail. Of course, that wasn't the end of it. Rogers knew that it wouldn't just be a matter of making sure Bailey made it to the courtroom. He also wanted to ensure that Bailey received a genuine trial, even though Bailey had already confessed to the crime. At the time, many trials of black defendants looked like mere formalities to get to the sentencing.

They were rushed through the legal process so that defense attorneys found it almost impossible to mount a real case. If the defendant was found guilty and sentenced to hang, a mob sometimes carried out the sentence right after the trial. The mob would grab the defendant as soon as he walked out of court and hang him immediately. Despite the circumstances of Doc Bailey's case, Captain Rogers didn't want any of that to happen. He posted men at the entrance to the courthouse to ensure that none of the mob made it inside. When the jury announced that it had reached a verdict, Rogers gave the order to move the defendant to the upper floor of the courthouse. The jury found Doc Bailey guilty of first-degree murder.

The sentence was death, to be carried out at a later day. But the mob reacted as it had in other cases. It wanted the sentence to be carried out now. It threatened to storm the courthouse, but Frank and the other men posted downstairs held firm. The lawmen spent the night in Nacogdoches. Their plan was to take Bailey back to Rusk, but it was too dangerous to do it that day. The next morning, the posse was finally able to take Bailey to the train station and send him to Rusk. He stayed there in a penitentiary for the next month. Then he was brought back to Nacogdoches on November 7, 1907. Bailey confessed again while on the gallows, and he

was hanged in front of a crowd of thousands. Frank learned an important lesson that fall. A popular idea in those days was the principle of one riot, one ranger. It held that one ranger was enough to de-escalate a dangerous situation. But for assignments like the Doc Bailey case, a single Ranger would never have been enough. Taking on mobs would not just require a show of strength. It would also require quick planning, a cool head, and leadership skills. And Frank was about to get his own tests in each.

tests in each. The first test came in June of 1908, the summer after Doc Bailey's trial. Frank and his new partner, Oscar Latta, received a phone call from the Sabine County Sheriff. The sheriff reported that a white farmer had been killed in his home between the towns of Hemphill and San Augustine. The farmer had been sitting with his wife and child when he was shot through the window. Frank and Oscar conducted an investigation. It led them to Perry Price, a young black man who worked on the dead man's farm. Price confessed to the murder, but he also said he'd been put up to it. Price said the

farmer's brother-in-law, a white man named Robert Wright, paid him $5 to do the job. After the interrogation, a local sheriff recommended the Rangers take Price to the county jail in Hemphill. Frank and Oscar had their reservations. In the space of a few hours, a mob had formed, and it was right outside. The Rangers knew what was coming next if the mob had its way. Price would be lynched. They couldn't keep Price there. He'd be much safer outside the county.

They chose a town called Center, 43 miles away. To get Price to the new destination, Frank and Oscar devised a plan. They would put Price in a buggy and drive him out of Hemphill in plain sight. The rangers told the mob that they needed to take Price out of town so that he could point out other offenders. The mob believed them. Much later, when the mob discovered that it had been duped, it was furious. There was no way to catch up with the Rangers by that point, so the mob took its revenge on the next available target.

There were six black men sitting in the Hemp Hill Jail. They were there for the alleged killing of a white farmer who'd been shot at a dance. The men were all present at the dance, and another person said the killing was a plot by the six suspects. The men had been sitting in jail for two weeks by the time Frank and Oscar rode out of Hemphill with Perry Price. At about one o'clock in the morning,

100 to 200 men stormed the jail. They dragged the six men from a cell and hauled them outside. One of the six tried to escape, but he was shot. According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, he was Cleveland Williams. The remaining five, Jerry Evans, Will Johnson, Mose Spellman, Frank Williams, and William Manuel were hanged from the same tree. Then the mob expanded beyond town limits.

It killed a black man named Bill McCoy who was standing at the gate of a farm when he was shot. Then two more black men were shot and thrown in a creek. Their identities remain unknown and their bodies were discovered the next day. It was one of the deadliest lynchings in a creek. Their identities remain unknown, and their bodies were discovered the next day. It was one of the deadliest lynchings in Texas history,

and Perry Price, now hidden away in the town of Center, narrowly avoided being part of it. Frank and Oscar heard that the man they needed now, Robert Wright, had been seen in Center. Perry Price still maintained that Wright had paid him to kill the farmer. But soon after the possible sighting, Wright fled back to his home. The rangers sent a deputy to arrest him. And then Perry Price and Robert Wright were sent to Beaumont to await trial. Further investigation revealed that Robert Wright was the lone culprit.

He likely believed that a black farm worker, Barry Price, would be an easy patsy. It's assumed that Price confessed to a crime he didn't commit because he viewed the situation as hopeless. It was his word against that of a white man. So he figured it would be better to confess and then work with the lawmen than say he was innocent and fall prey to the lynch mob. When the newspapers reported on the events, they didn't just report on the violence. They also reported on Frank and Oscar.

One paper went so far as to say the quick thinking of the Rangers was the primary reason that Price wasn't lynched. Frank would need that same quick thinking, and more, for his next major showdown with a lynch mob. It happened one month later, and that time, he was all alone. The work never stopped. Being a Texas Ranger meant that not only was Frank patrolling his jurisdiction, but he was also called as a witness for cases he'd worked.

It meant that he was always traveling, policing one town on one day and testifying in another town on the next. In July of 1908, Frank was en route to Beaumont to testify in a case that had dogged Company C for the past few months. He was going to testify before a grand jury, but little did he know the trouble he was walking into. On the afternoon of the 14th, a young black man was walking through the outskirts of Beaumont. He heard a scream nearby. He followed it and arrived at a disturbing scene.

He saw a young white girl lying on the ground. She had been raped and she was now unconscious. The passerby saw a black man flee into the woods nearby. Then two other black residents chased the man, but he got away. The girl was Ada Bell Hopkins and she was 13 years old. The witnesses reported the crime. The police began an investigation, and news of the assault spread, and a mob formed like it had in Nacogdoches and Hemphill.

But this mob was much bigger. It was more than a thousand strong, and its members spread out through Beaumont. They rampaged through the town and its fringes as they hunted for the man who'd assaulted Hopkins. They burned down black-owned homes and businesses. And they were hasty. Out in the woods, they found an elderly black man who was hunting squirrels. They shot him dead, but learned afterward that he wasn't the man they were looking for. Local law enforcement had its hands full.

The lawmen didn't have the technology or the tactics of today's police. With a mob that big and that angry, the police were easily overwhelmed. They were forced to focus on stopping the mob violence, so the investigation of the original crime slowed to a crawl. The police tried to reduce the heat by making a bunch of arrests. They detained both material witnesses and suspects who were simply caught in the dragnet. But it didn't work. Not only did the mob keep hunting, but the police didn't catch the culprit. Meanwhile, the county sheriff conducted his own investigation. He spoke to different witnesses,

who also claimed to have seen a black man who was talking to the girl before the crime took place. The witnesses said the man was Claude Golden, who'd previously been arrested twice for sexual offenses. Law enforcement located Golden and arrested him on July 15th. They also arrested a teenager, Matthew Fennell, whom the sheriff probably thought was also a suspect. Both were taken to the local jail. The mob learned about the new suspects and descended on the jail. The sheriff saw that things were going south. If one of the suspects was the real culprit and he was going to stand trial, they would both have to get out of Beaumont now. To get the suspects to the train station, the police had to avoid the mob. So the suspects were handcuffed together and concealed in the

floorboards of a buggy. They were driven around town, never staying in one place for very long. They ended up in the sheriff's own barn. The mob eventually figured out the police were trying to stage a getaway, so they went to the train station and waited. By now it was the evening of the 15th, and the crowd had grown to 2,000 people and that's when Frank Hamer arrived. He came by rail and saw the crowd waiting on the platform. He was unaware of the events of the past 24 hours, but he could clearly tell something was wrong and offered his help to the sheriff. The sheriff eagerly accepted.

Frank predicted that it was going to be a long night, and it was just getting started. The sheriff told Frank that Golden and Fennell were hidden in his barn, but the police couldn't watch them since they were busy with the mob. So Frank went to the barn himself. He was now on guard duty. The two suspects probably didn't know what to make of it when a Texas Ranger crept into the barn with them. It probably signaled that things were far worse than they thought. For several hours, Frank kept watch on the barn's entrances. Then he heard the unmistakable signatures of the mob. Frank and the suspects heard gunshots and shouting in the near distance, and the sounds grew louder as the mob grew closer. Then the barn door opened. It was one

of the vigilantes on the hunt. Fennell, Golden, and Frank kept absolutely quiet. One false move and the vigilante would know they were there. Seconds must have felt like days, but then the vigilante moved on. Frank knew they had to leave, but they couldn't use the buggy because it would be too noisy. There was only one solution. He would have to get Fennell and Golden out through the woods on foot. The three men crept out of the barn, and right around that time, the sheriff and a police detective were able to rush back to the sheriff's farm to help Frank. The three lawmen took Fennell and Golden, still handcuffed together,

through the wilds outside Beaumont. Running and even walking would have made too much noise, so they crawled through the wilds outside Beaumont. Running and even walking would have made too much noise, so they crawled through the mud. The mob decided that the suspects and whoever must be with them must be somewhere in the swamp beyond the town. The members of the mob lit their torches and grabbed their rifles, and now Frank Hamer, Texas Ranger, was on the other end of a manhunt. Whenever the mob came close, the lawmen and the suspects held their breath

and pressed themselves into the wet ground. When the coast was clear, they continued crawling through the swamp. The stop-and-go routine lasted for hours. They crawled to safety, inch by inch. When dawn finally broke over the horizon, the group was still ahead of the mob and they found a church four miles outside Beaumont. The lawmen hid the suspects at the church until they were safely transported to Galveston, where they awaited trial. Matthew Fennell confessed to the assault of Ada Bell Hopkins, but neither the

sheriff nor a grand jury believed him. There was no evidence that placed him at the scene of the crime, and it's possible that Fennell, like Perry Price before in Hemphill, confessed in order to make things easier for himself. He was cleared of all charges when Hopkins woke up and identified Golden as her attacker in a photographic lineup. Golden was tried and convicted. He was sentenced to death, with the sentence to be carried out a few months later in February 1909. Golden was sent to jail in Jasper, Texas to await his execution. He maintained his innocence until the end. While in the jailhouse,

he sang hymns and popular patriotic songs. The inmates, guards, and those who lived in the immediate vicinity knew him as the man with a golden baritone voice. On the day of his execution, hundreds of people gathered outside, and he addressed them through the window. Golden once again denied that he had any part in the assault. He implored the crowd to be Christians and thanked the sheriff for his kind treatment. According to local legend, the whole town stood during Golden's appeal. Then at 40 minutes past noon on February 12, 1909,

the sheriff dropped the trap and Golden was hanged. 20 minutes later, doctors pronounced him dead. Captain Rogers recognized Frank Hamer's work in outwitting the lynch mob that night in July 1908. Rogers gave Frank a rare gift in the form of written praise. Rogers wrote, Ranger Hamer's presence of mind, coolness, and courage on this occasion, as on all other like occasions, is indeed very commendable. Frank faced similar situations again and again, whether he was policing the border in the Bandit Wars

or taking on the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas. And he showed similar qualities each time. He solidified himself as one of the great Texas Rangers. But big changes were on the way. A world war was on the horizon, and Prohibition, and the most devastating stock market crash in American history. And then the most corrupt governor in Texas history took office, and the future of Frank Hamer and the Rangers hung in the balance. Next time on Legends of the Old West, Frank is much older.

He's seen quite a bit, he's gone from job to job, and now he's developed a reputation around the country. New leadership in the governor's mansion forces a change to his career, but it sets him up for the case that will make him internationally famous for all time. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. This season was co-executive produced by Stephen Walters in association with Ritual Productions. Research and writing by Dante Flores. Original music by Rob Valliere. executive produced by Stephen Walters in association with Ritual Productions. Research and writing by Dante Flores. Original music by Rob Valliere. Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com

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