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Mt. Vernon Indiana

“Organized”

October 8, 2021 by Peg Leave a Comment

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.

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Filed Under: Events, Gavel Gamut, Indiana, Mt. Vernon, Posey County, Posey County Lynchings, Segregation Tagged With: 1878 murders, Ben Uchitelle, eye-witness account, Ilse Horacek, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, JUDGE LYNCH!, justice, lynchings, Manuel Cronbach, Mt. Vernon Indiana, Negro, organized, Oscar Thomas, Posey County, publicly atone for sins, truth

The Ultimate Sin

July 20, 2018 by Peg Leave a Comment

NJC/Dred Scott Symposium

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. Campbell was America’s recognized guru in the area of myth and religion. He postulated that the ultimate/unpardonable sin was to be unaware.

When Peg and I visited the just opened Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama earlier this month then participated in the Dred Scott convocation in St. Louis, Missouri last week, I was constantly made aware of Campbell’s admonition. I thought back to when I lived in an apartheid society of which I was barely conscious. When I saw the representations of lynchings and Jim Crow laws in Montgomery the stark reality of a separate and unequal daily life assaulted me. But when in St. Louis I listened to personal accounts of Black people who were on the unequal side of the equation, my own lack of alertness came into focus.

While you can anticipate the content of the displays at the EJI, when you walk through the hundreds of metal coffins inscribed with thousands of names of murdered Black people including several from Posey County, Indiana, you will naturally contemplate the evil we are capable of doing to one another just because someone may be an “other”. But when you hear directly from living persons who are still experiencing a denial of equal justice you are forced to confront your own previous lack of awareness.

The Dred Scott case was decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1857 and led directly to the Civil War four years later. It is only one of many wrong decisions of the Supreme Court but is probably the worst. Chief Justice Roger Taney (1777-1864) who sat on the Supreme Court for almost thirty years authored the 7 to 2 opinion. It held that Negroes could not be citizens of the United States and had no rights that white men were legally bound to recognize, and that Dred Scott must remain a slave.

On Monday, July 16, 2018 at Logan University in St. Louis descendants of Dred Scott (c.1799-1858), Confederate President Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) and Roger Taney along with one hundred and fifty judges, attorneys and academic scholars were brought together by Judge Judith Draper and her husband Justice George Draper in conjunction with the National Judicial College to engage in “reconciliation”.

NJC President Benes Aldana, NJC technology specialist Joseph Sawyer, Michael Roosevelt education specialist for the State of California Courts and I as an NJC faculty member presented the afternoon sessions after the descendants and audience members held an interesting and extremely positive discussion during three hours in the morning.

The relatives of Taney and Davis did not attempt to excuse slavery. They did, however, clearly and poignantly point out their ancestors had done many good things along with their egregious errors in moral and legal judgments. As Peg and I listened to them I was reminded of Mark Antony’s funeral oration for Julius Caesar:

“The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft’ interred with their bones.”

William Shakespeare, Act III, sc ii.

What the EJI and Dred Scott experiences did for me was force me to remember and dissect my experiences under the system of legal apartheid in my hometown of Pawhuska, Oklahoma. I had never given more than a passing thought as to why “Colored” boys could not enter the front door of the pool hall or come to the front part of the building. And now my home town is New Harmony, Indiana where, according to the book by William E. Wilson On the Sunny Side of a One Way Street at page 91 he wrote that when he was a boy in New Harmony:

“By the twentieth century New Harmony had lost the egalitarian faith on which it was founded a hundred years before, and Aunt Minnie’s Lizzie (Wilson’s Aunt’s Black servant) was the only Negro permitted to live in the town. She had a room in the hotel (owned by Wilson’s Aunt and Uncle) and never went out on the street, day or night. Uncle Harry and Aunt Minnie did everything possible to make Lizzie feel like one of the family, not only because she was an excellent cook but also because they loved her. Even so, I have often wondered since how Lizzie endured her ostracism in the town.”

And Wilson also writes of his father’s loss of his Congressional seat in 1925 because he refused to join the Ku Klux Klan.

Well, I am more “aware” now than I was before the visit to the EJI Museum and Memorial, the Dred Scott convocation and Mr. Wilson’s book, but realize there’s more I need to do while, I hope, there’s still time to do it.

I wish to sincerely thank the friendly and expert staff of our fine Alexandrian Public Library in Mt. Vernon, Indiana for providing me with several excellent reference works on Dred Scott and William E. Wilson’s interesting book on New Harmony.

 

For video of Peg’s pictures of the Convocation please go to: https://www.youtube.com/edit?video_id=qqOf6KZ7ZBw&video_referrer=watch

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Filed Under: America, Events, Gavel Gamut, Indiana, Mt. Vernon, National Judicial College, New Harmony, Oklahoma, Osage County, Posey County, Slavery Tagged With: Alexandrian Public Library, Chief Justice Roger Taney, Civil War, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Dred Scott, Equal Justice Initiative, guru of myth and religion, James M. Redwine, Jim Crow laws, Jim Redwine, Joseph Campbell, Julius Caesar, Ku Klux Klan, legal apartheid, Logan University, lynchings, Mark Antony, Mt. Vernon Indiana, National Judicial College, New Harmony Indiana, On the Sunny Side of a One Way Street, Posey County Indiana, Sarah Lawrence College, slavery, The Legacy Museum and Memorial, The Ultimate Sin, William E. Wilson

The Planets Align

March 30, 2018 by Peg Leave a Comment

Posey County Magistrate Courtroom Backdrop
Desk from 1825 Posey County Courthouse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posey County’s new jail and historic courthouse can now be connected to provide better and cheaper service to citizens. Sheriff Oeth may already have funds in the new jail budget to provide video conferencing between the jail and the courts. Sheriff Oeth and both Posey County judges have long been in favor of video conferencing. Perhaps this important public service can soon be in operation.

The benefits are many and the cost is low. Savings of transportation costs and deputy time along with greatly enhanced security for the public are within reach. And since most of the persons lodged in our jail are awaiting court disposition and, therefore, presumed by law to be innocent, public humiliation experienced from orange jump suits, handcuffs, leg shackles and armed guards can be reduced. And while most cases where video conferencing can enhance justice will be local jail to courthouse matters, we have numerous matters where inmates in state and federal prisons could appear electronically and we sometimes could save a great deal of expert witness expense in both criminal and civil cases.

For the Sheriff’s Department to institute video conferencing another major need is a location at the courthouse. We now, with the requested assistance of the Posey County Board of Commissioners and County Council, are in the process of refurbishing a small courtroom in our 142-year-old courthouse for just such a purpose. The photographs included with this article show the courtroom backdrop which was first used in 1893 and furniture from the 1825 courthouse that has been in the possession of the City of Mt. Vernon since 1893. Mayor Bill Curtis and the Mt. Vernon City Council have graciously returned these historic items for county use.

A small courtroom on the first floor of our courthouse will open up numerous important possibilities for both public service and saving taxpayer funds. While I plan to concentrate on this newly modified space as a Magistrate’s Courtroom to ease the burdens and costs of family type cases, this revamped space can be used for conferences by attorneys, mediation, pre-trial conferences, weddings and extra seating when there is overflow in the courtroom on the second floor.

Okay, we are ready for next week and the devil in the details of a Magistrate’s Court. Hang in there with me and maybe we can all do some good.

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Filed Under: Circuit Court, Gavel Gamut, Judicial, Law, Mt. Vernon, Posey County Tagged With: County Council, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Magistrate Courtroom, Mayor Bill Curtis, Mt. Vernon Indiana, Posey County Board of Commissioners, Posey County historic courthouse, Posey County jail, Sheriff Oeth, video conferencing

Where The Flowers Have Gone

March 10, 2017 by Peg Leave a Comment

My friend Ilse (not Elsa) Dorsch Horacek and I met in my courtroom on March 14, 1990. As I rarely remember even the names of people I have met the previous week it speaks a great deal to the power of Ilse’s personality that I remember our first meeting twenty-seven years ago.

What speaks to her sterling character was her introduction to me of the horrific murders and pogrom of African Americans that occurred in Posey County, Indiana in the autumn of 1878. Ilse had known of and personally experienced the kinds of horrors and hardships we humans are capable of inflicting upon one another.

When Ilse told me of her childhood in World War II Germany I often encouraged her to use her excellent literary talents to record and share her unique viewpoint of that time. Our meeting came about because she, as President of the Posey County Coterie Literary Society, asked if the Society could tour the courthouse and speak with me about its history.

While Else has composed her interesting compilations of Posey County history in her It Was Written books, her own life is portrayed in her sobering and insightful new book Flowers for Hitler which she and Evansville, Indiana author Mike Whicker published in 2016. To me the book’s greatest value is its exposition of the lessons we humans just cannot seem to fully learn, i.e., we humans often inflict great evil on other less powerful humans and there are no winners in war.

An example of Ilse’s prescient understanding of this hard lesson appears at page 42 of her book. According to her first hand account, Ilse’s friend and high school classmate, Sigi, was literally blown to pieces by American bombers. As Ilse said, “My hatred for the Americans was complete”.

Of course, because of Ilse’s deep-rooted sense of justice she also condemned the evils of Nazism and she makes no apology for Hitler. The Ilse I met and have had the pleasure of knowing feels deeply the evils we are all somehow connected to, such as was inflicted on those Black people in 1878, and may even encourage, at least by our silence.

I bought my valued copy of Ilse’s heartfelt book at The Cozy Cottage on Walnut Street in Mt. Vernon, Indiana. You can also order it; ISBN 978-0-9844160-7-3. There are probably few better uses for your $15.00.

 

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Filed Under: America, Democracy, Gavel Gamut, Posey County, War Tagged With: American bombers, deep-rooted sense of justice, evils of Nazism, Flowers for Hitler, horrific murders and pogrom of African Americans in Posey County Indiana in the autumn of 1878, horrors and hardships we humans are capable of inflicting upon one another, Ilse Dorsch Horacek, It Was Written books, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Mike Whicker, Mt. Vernon Indiana, Posey County Coterie Literary Society, Posey County history, Sigi, The Cozy Cottage, World War II Germany

© 2024 James M. Redwine

 

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