Columns
“Organized”
On September 18, 2021 I received an email from Mr. Ben Uchitelle, Attorney at Law, in Clayton, Missouri. Mr. Uchitelle had read my book JUDGE LYNCH! and found my email address, jmredwine@aol.com, from my website, www.jamesmredwine.com.
Mr. Uchitelle’s Great Grandfather was Manuel Cronbach who was a prominent citizen of Mt. Vernon, Posey County, Indiana who at age seventeen in 1878 personally observed the lynched bodies of four Black men hanging in the center of town on the courthouse lawn. Mr. Uchitelle’s Great Grandfather described the murders in his short autobiography. Mr. Uchitelle shared his Great Grandfather’s observations with me:
“The negro had no social standing in Mt. Vernon but they did not seem to feel any the worse for this. They were treated well so long as they knew their place. One of the great tragedies of their lives in Mt. Vernon was the lynching of four of their number by a mob. Oscar Thomas, a white deputy sheriff, was going to the home of a colored man to arrest him, was shot and killed. Feeling ran high, a white mob was at once organized and four of their number were hanged on trees in the Public Square, and it is claimed that one negro man was put into the fire box of an incinerator and burned to death. How many of the lynched negroes were guilty I do not know, but the bodies of those hanged in the Public Square dangled in the air nearly all next day. I asked the coroner, Uncle Bill Hendricks, why he did not cut them down. He answered, ‘I hain’t had no official notice that they are dead.’ Certainly a profound and unanswerable reason.”
I appreciate Mr. Uchitelle sharing this eye-witness account with me and urge others who might have historical records of the 1878 murders such as letters or diaries to contact me. The truth has no statute of limitations.
From my first knowledge of these horrific events that Oscar Thomas’ descendant, Ilse Horacek, gave to me in 1990, I have sought to uncover the facts. What I do know from my research is that Mr. Manuel Cronbach’s poignant comments illustrate the attitude of the general population of Mt. Vernon and Posey County, Indiana in 1878 and, perhaps, long after. As a practicing Posey County Attorney, Posey County Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, County Attorney and Posey County Judge for a total of well over forty years I find the callous official attitude of Coroner Hendricks to be one of the saddest aspects of the whole matter.
Other portions of Mr. Cronbach’s account that are pregnant with what they do not say is his question as to how many of the lynch victims were guilty. Since none of the four lynched men were involved in the death of Officer Thomas, the answer is zero. And Mr. Daniel Harrison, Sr. who was involved was grabbed and chopped into pieces and his parts were dumped in the jail outhouse.
But the word in Mr. Cronbach’s account that most loudly calls out to me is “organized”, as John Leffel, who was the owner and editor of the local Western Star newspaper in 1878, reported that two to three hundred white, male citizens of Posey County, Indiana organized themselves into a well-regimented, armed group and marched onto the courthouse lawn and murdered all five Black men.
As I have done since 1990, I am still calling for the community to finally and publicly atone for the sins of 1878 and erect a memorial to the victims on the courthouse square. Thank you, Attorney Ben Uchitelle, for contacting me and for your interest in justice, even if justice remains long delayed.
Positive or Negative
There is no memorial on the Posey County, Indiana courthouse lawn to the seven Negroes murdered by a white mob on October 12, 1878. There is a modest stele naming those soldiers with Posey County connections who served in the Revolutionary War and an impressive statue honoring all who served in the Civil War. There are bronze plaques on the lobby walls of the Posey County Coliseum commemorating many of those who served. The Coliseum houses one of Posey County’s two courts and the other court is located in the courthouse.
Because I was the elected Posey Circuit Court Judge and because our son, James David Redwine, was a West Point graduate who would later earn a Bronze Star for Service on the front lines of both the Gulf War 1990-1991 and the Iraq War of 2003-2011 I was asked to speak at both the War Memorial Re-Dedication on Sunday, October 21, 1990 and Re-Dedication of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on July 23, 2008. I was honored to do so and wrote the following poems for the occasions. The poems appeared in several newspapers after each commemoration:
WAR MEMORIAL RE-DEDICATION
(Sunday, October 21, 1990)
SUNDAY MORNING CHIMES
How dear it is to be alive:
To hear the peal of morning chimes;
To feel the invigorating sting of this autumn day;
To taste the rich and biting air;
To smell the acrid smoke of burning leaves;
To see the glory of Nature’s third act.
How satisfying to still be a player:
To know a child’s trust;
A family’s support;
A friend’s companionship; or
A lover’s caress.
How thrilling it is to learn,
To plan,
To strive
To serve,
To live!
These wondrous things: These sensations;
These desires;
These dreams;
These visions. This life,
Is what these heroes have sacrificed for us.
RE-DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS AND SAILORS MONUMENT
(Wednesday, July 23, 2008)
WELL DONE!
At Lexington and Concord, the young blood began to flow.
At the Battle of New Orleans, muskets killed our cousins and our foes.
At the Alamo and Buena Vista, we stood to the last man.
At Shiloh, Chickamauga and Gettysburg, brothers’ blood soaked the sand.
At San Juan Hill and when the Maine went down, our soldiers never flinched.
At Verdun and by the Marne, a million men died in the trench.
At D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, after Hiroshima’s mushroom clouds,
At Incheon Landing the forgotten war brought many more funeral shrouds.
At Khe Sanh and during Tet, we held our own and more.
At the Battle of Medina Ridge, our Gulf War warriors upheld the Corps.
At Sinjar, Mosul, and places with strange names,
Our Iraqi War veterans now earn their fame.
In uniforms, our citizens have served well everyone.
Today, we here proclaim to them our solemn praise: Well done!
It is fitting and proper that we honor those who serve and that we are permanently reminded of the horrors of war. Society needs to be constantly on guard and eternally grateful. Of course, the reasons that call for memorials about wars are much the same as why we need memorials to our collective evil done to some citizens by other citizens.
Since I first discovered, by accident, in 1990 the legal system’s long covered up murders of Daniel Harrison, Sr., Daniel Harrison, Jr., John Harrison, James Good, Ed Warner, William Chambers and Jeff Hopkins by, as the Mt. Vernon, Indiana Western Star Newspaper said on October 17, 1878, “two to three hundred of the county’s best white citizens” right on the Posey County, Indiana courthouse campus, I have called for accountability and a memorial to the victims. Society owes this atonement to the victims and we as a society need it for ourselves.
How’s It Happen?
This morning at 5:00 a.m. I woke up thirsty and went to the kitchen for a drink of water. While my eyes were beginning to engage, I reached into the cabinet for a glass. Then I managed to locate the faucet and turned it on. Clear, potable water came rushing out. I did not need to walk to the pond or draw a bucket from a well. It suddenly occurred to me that somehow from somewhere someone had done me a great service. And they did not even know me.
It was Thursday so I knew I needed to get our trash out. I collected the week’s refuse of leftovers and packaging and took it to our gate by the road. Later that day as I went to the post office, I noticed the trash was gone. My mail box contained greetings from two health care solicitors, we must now be in a demographics database. But it also contained cards from our kids and some important information from the V.A. Someone who did not know us cared enough to send it.
To get to the post office I drove on paved roads with proper markings and directions such as traffic control. Somebody must have sweated in the heat and shivered in the cold to help me get to the post office. And, of course, somebody at the post office who was neither friend nor family got our mail to us.
There were street lights helping to guide my way and a police officer watching out as he sat in his patrol car near the café. He may have been enjoying a cup of free coffee but he deserved it. He was there for us and he did not know us.
Who are all these people who provide water and garbage collection and sewer and street and energy and safety and health care? Why do they do it, especially all those town and city and county politicians who serve on boards and in offices that keep the lights on and the streets both navigable and safe? Many of them serve without pay or any financial benefits. Why do they give of their time and labor to serve the rest of us?
When I see news footage from other countries where people are without power or safety for themselves and their families, I not only feel for them I realize how good we have it. It even will sometimes slow down my complaining about all the services I receive from people who do not know me and have no reason to want to. Every now and then, through the dark glass of pessimism, a small light works its way into my psyche and I remember how lucky I am.
So, thank you to all of you who helped me slake my thirst. I will try to complain less and enjoy more. That should last a day or two if I do not watch cable news.
Do Not Cross the Potomac River
In 49 BC the Senate in the Republic of Rome ordered Gaius Julius Caesar to not bring his army across the Rubicon River into the city of Rome. Caesar said, “Let the die be cast”; that is, I’ll take my chances. He did, Rome as a Republic collapsed into civil war and instead of a representative government the Roman people got a dictator. Five years later, on the Ides of March, Caesar was deposed by force.
The people who founded the United States of America came from a tradition of great fear of military power over civilians. In fact, in our Declaration of Independence one of the main complaints against King George III was that, “He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.”
This great fear of military control over the civilian populace of America was guarded against in our Constitution. Article I, section 8 endows Congress with the power and authority to declare war, and to raise armies and militias to suppress insurrections. Article II, section 2 establishes that the democratically elected President shall be in control of the armed forces as the Commander-in-Chief.
In his exhaustive and exhausting treatise, The Framer’s Coup, The Making of the United States Constitution, Professor Michael J. Klarman points out the vital importance to our Founders that “[I]n all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.” See p. 330.
We Americans profess pride in and support of our military as long as we are assured our military remembers its place. That system has worked pretty well and we are likely to maintain it in spite of political pressure being brought upon the generals to undermine their Commander-in-Chief. As I recall from my service days, I did not always recognize as wise what my military superiors thought was wisdom. Joseph Heller in his prescient novel, Catch-22, had a pretty firm grip on the banality of much of the military. On the hand, our politicians sometimes also fall a little short of a full deck. Still, at least we have the opportunity to have some say in who our civilian leaders will be and we can fire them.
Therefore, for me, I’ll chose to bob and weave with the occasional civilian loser versus a palace military coup. Back off oh ’ye purveyors of a Banana Republic. As Scarlett O’Hara said, “Tomorrow’s another day” and as Annie said, “Tomorrow is only a day away.” I can wait. Elections, yes, coups, no.
Thanks A Lot Noah
In his book Letters From The Earth, Mark Twain has Noah making an extra trip in the Ark so he could save the housefly that spreads typhoid fever. I could not find any reference to scorpions in the Book of Genesis nor in the account of the Great Flood that also appears in the Quran. However, Noah, or in Arabic, Nuh, must have heroically preserved the “creature with the burning sting” as I stepped on one in our cabin at JPeg Osage Ranch last night. If Satan had stepped on a scorpion with bare cloven hoof, I bet he would have sent a scathing letter to heaven from his temporary banishment on Earth. Perhaps then either St. Michael or St. Gabriel, the Devil’s correspondents, might have pointed out to the Creator that His creation of the scorpion was a bust.
The Latin name, scorpion, given to the eight-legged arachnid with the pinching front claws and the stinging tail aptly describes the menace that apparently has no value except to encourage one to wear shoes in the house. Except for me, scorpions have few natural enemies other than lizards and tarantulas; choose your poison.
What I want to know is whom did Mother Nature put in charge of species extinction and why hasn’t She extinguished scorpions? Scorpions have been around for 435 million years and, I humbly suggest, that is long enough. According to Google (who else are you going to rely on), extinctions are a normal part of evolution. They occur naturally, periodically and somewhat regularly. We Homo sapiens would not be here if millions of other species, dinosaurs for example, had not gone extinct before we came out of the primordial ooze two to three hundred thousand years ago after two to three million years of genetic iterations of hominids.
I submit it is fair to ask Mother Nature, “What were you thinking?” Much like the White-Tailed Hornet of poet laureate Robert Frost’s poem, it appears to me whoever designed the scorpion should have gone back to the drawing board, or better yet, file thirteened the whole thing. The white-tailed hornet (or scorpion) might be viewed romantically by nature lovers who assume infallibility or even lovability in all of nature’s creations. But Frost (1874-1963) watched in disillusionment as a white-tailed hornet in search of a fly to eat repeatedly attacked both the head of a nail and Frost’s nose. As Frost concludes about nature and life in general, once we begin to see the fallibility of the natural world “reflected in the mud and even dust” we can no longer convince ourselves we humans are only a little lower than the angels and are probably no higher than creepy crawlers on the floor.
The White-Tailed Hornet
The white-tailed hornet lives in a balloon (nest)
That floats against the ceiling of the woodshed
…
Verse could be written on the certainty
With which he penetrates my best defense
Of whirling hands and arms about the head
To stab me in the sneeze-nerve of a nostril
…
I watched him where he swooped, he pounced, he struck;
But what he found was just a nail head (not a fly).
…
Won’t this whole instinct matter bear revision?
To err is human, not to, animal.
Or so we pay the compliment to instinct.
…
’Twas disillusion upon disillusion.
In much the same manner as Frost’s hornet, did that scorpion on my cabin floor mistake me for either dinner or a possible mate? Why bother me at all? When it should have been gainfully employed in more reasonable pursuits it was not using any reason and we both suffered for its frailty.
The Greek astronomer Ptolemy identified the constellation Scorpius in the 2nd century A.D. Why didn’t Mother Nature take that as a clue to make scorpions extinct 2,000 years ago? Even Nancy Reagan with her reliance on astrology for advice to her husband on affairs of state might have used her influence to have “Scorpio” disappeared from our existence by bringing the power of the federal government to bear. After all, our federal government killed off generations of eagles and other more cuddly species than scorpions with DDT. Why did scorpions escape?
I am glad the bison somehow miraculously survived mankind’s slaughter but do wonder what if any reason exists to preserve the scorpion. I guess it comes down to “Only the good die young” and we humans have been around about 430 million fewer years than the scorpion. We will probably be gone long before scorpions pass.
On the other hand, perhaps I can convince Jeff Bezos and Amazon to help me market scorpions to the public as pets. Hey, entrepreneur Gary Dahl got rich back in the 1970’s by convincing people a rock could be a loving pet. Maybe a slogan such as “Get Your Zing Avoiding a Sting” could be catchy. Or maybe I could sell them as a great gift idea for misanthropic people or dry them out and make necklaces from them. I see all kinds of people sporting plastic human skulls on their belt buckles or as tattoos.
Of course, if I were able to get such an enterprise going the government would just regulate it out of existence or tax it to death. Well, at least I could get rid of some of the crunchy little crustaceans that way. In the meantime, I guess I’ll just need to wear my shoes and watch my step.
Not A Pyrrhic Victory Please
“Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.”
Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III, Act II, scene v, ln. 55.
Category 4 Hurricane Ida has caused immense emotional and economic loss to the citizens of Louisiana and surrounding areas. The beautiful and historic city of New Orleans was hit hard. Numerous institutions such as Tulane University lost power and will need weeks or even months to recover. Many of Tulane’s students have been evacuated to Houston, Texas and the Tulane Green Wave football team that was scheduled to host the Oklahoma Sooners has graciously agreed to travel to Norman, Oklahoma for the first game of the season September 04, 2021. Perhaps there is opportunity to find “profit” from Mother Nature’s fury.
In 1943 the fiercest football rivalry in America was the annual Army-Navy game. The two service academies have produced such luminaries as Admirals Halsey and Nimitz plus Senator McCain and President Carter from the Naval Academy as well as Generals MacArthur and Bradley plus Presidents Grant and Eisenhower from West Point. As the saying goes, “At West Point, much of the history we teach was made by people we taught.” Our service academies, all of them, have been crucial to our country’s success but the vigorous competition between West Point and Annapolis in football is special.
So, it was truly inspiring when on November 28, 1943 Army cadets divided up and half cheered for Navy. President Roosevelt as Commander-in-Chief had declared certain WWII restrictions on the game so all the midshipmen from Navy were not allowed to travel to Michie Stadium at West Point. In the spirit of fair play half of the Corps of Cadets supported Navy. You can probably guess how the game turned out; Navy won. Well, no good deed goes unpunished. Regardless, O.U. and Tulane have a similar opportunity to show fellowship and sportsmanship.
I suggest the people of Oklahoma extend the hand of emotional support to the good folks from Louisiana and rename the Sooner Schooner the Ragin’ Cagin’ and serve gumbo and beignets instead of chili and mud pies. The O.U. band could easily ramp up their trombone section and pound out a few rousing choruses of “When the Saints Go Marching In” while the whole student body marches around the field at half-time. Now, one more thing. Unlike the ingrates from the Naval Academy in 1943 who beat our son Jim’s alma mater, I fully expect the genteel southern folks from Louisiana to have the good graces to LOSE!
p.s. I realize this column will probably not appear in the newspapers before the game is played. However, Peg put it out on our website (www.jamesmredwine.com) Tuesday, August 31st several days before it appears in the papers and several days before kickoff. As I am confident the countless faithful fans of Gavel Gamut include Oklahoma Coach Lincoln Riley and Tulane Coach Willie Fritz along with O.U. Athletic Director Joe Castiglione and Tulane’s Athletic Director Troy Dannen they should have ample time to incorporate my suggestions. Of course, free tickets and some etouffee for Peg and me would seem to be a proper lagniappe for our involvement.