Guest column

Memory of a fateful day in Hot Springs

Events of the past two years, and in particular the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., have awakened disturbing scenes from my youth.

I grew up in the 1960s, a time of tumultuous political, social, and economic changes. Anyone old enough to remember the 1960s will recall America's struggle with constructs of race. The evening news brought the Vietnam War to living rooms across the country, including attempts by Presidents Kennedy and later Johnson to bring social justice to America. Marked by race riots and Vietnam War protests, the decade of the '60s saw the enactment of legislation addressing a historic injustice, namely, ensuring voting rights for racial minorities.

But while there is a growing awareness and acceptance of diversity, there has been a generally benign, if not apathetic, response to oppressive and frequently brutal law enforcement violations of the civil rights and constitutional freedoms of minorities, more often targeting those of lower economic class regardless of race or ethnicity.

The recent killings of Sean Bell in New York, Kelly Thomas in California, Monroe Isadore in Arkansas, Michael Brown in Missouri, and others make it imperative that Americans of all backgrounds should face this issue head on. It was this vigor, altruism, and self-giving that inspired many in the 1960s to try to correct the mistakes of the past.

One of the most profound influences that helped me develop a deep sense of justice and equality was a gruesome narrative told me by my father when I was either 5 or 6 and many times thereafter. Years later, and in my 30s, I would help my father commit many memories to a journal. What follows is an edited selection from his journal in which he describes an event in 1922 he witnessed at a young age.

The Story of Bunk Harris

I believe this was the last lynching in Hot Springs, at least in public. One morning I had started home from downtown after selling early day papers. Sentinel Record was the morning paper, as I recall. I was on my bicycle, and one of my tires punctured and went flat on me. I had stopped at a hardware store on Central Avenue at Como Square. I bought the tire and while I was there several young men came in, I believe maybe five of them. They were well-dressed men in shirt sleeves, and neither did they look like rabble. They ordered pistols and opened up the fronts of their shirts and put the pistols in their belts and under the cover of their shirts.

One of them asked a question which I do not recall, but another replied: "We will go down to the city jail first." I thought the situation odd, but being only about 12 at the time I dismissed it from my mind and started walking home, rolling my bike beside me.

Boy, it seemed hot that morning! I arrived home and put the bicycle tire on, pumped it up and then rode it back downtown. I do not recall the exact time this all took place, but it must have been about noon. I went back down to the intersection at Como Square and a large crowd had gathered there. People were all standing around; traffic was stopped except on Market Street which was still moving. There were lots of people on Market Street, however, and traffic was moving at a very slow pace. At about the same time I saw a black man with a yellow silk-looking shirt on. He was in the middle of the crowd and standing next to a light pole which was near the center of Como Square. He was bareheaded and his hands were tied behind him. Several men with handkerchiefs around their nose and neck put a rope around the black man's head and neck and pulled it tight. The rope was then thrown over one of the heavy wires leading to the light pole, and literally before my eyes several of the men took up the slack in the rope and pulled the man up off his feet.

Imagine the circumstances; I observed the action carefully. In a way it seems like a dream even today. After the man was pulled up about three feet off the ground his legs and feet began to shake and tremble and as he was drawn up higher they shook more and more. As I watched his head snapped to the side and I suppose that is when his neck broke. He died there strung up to the light pole.

He hanged there for a while and then was lowered to the ground where he was tied to the back end of a truck. It was a flatbed truck and I remember the truck and the man who drove it very well. I used to know the driver's name. The driver was an ex-prize fighter. ... At about this time a Negro ambulance came flying up to the scene. Two black men jumped out of the ambulance with stretcher in hand. They were not allowed to take the hanged man with them because they were driven away by several men at the scene. I recall they kicked the attendants in the backsides until they got back in the ambulance and drove away back to Malvern Avenue. I recall that the men with kerchiefs around their faces were not the ones I saw in the hardware store. They wore overalls and one was short in stature.

When all of this transpired the man in the truck drove away very slowly like a parade, dragging the black hanged man's body down the street. I followed. I recall he drove up Market Street. This street was once named in Ripley's Believe it or Not as the shortest street in the U.S.A. At the intersection he turned right and then down Malvern Avenue until he arrived at the town's black mortuary. Here he cut the body loose and told the owner of the mortuary to do what he wanted with the body.

Now why was the black man killed? He killed a white man. Every evening I sold papers, the Hot Springs New Era, and I always scanned the news and remember very well the evening prior to the hanging that several burglaries were being committed in the better, more affluent part of town on Quapaw Avenue. The burglaries were carried out at night and nearly every week there would be news on the front page that someone had been burglarized as they slept. Valuables, even diamond rings, were reported being taken off fingers while people slept. The people who lived on Quapaw were all considered rich by the public. Doctors, lawyers and retirees from the north lived on Quapaw. In those days a person who could afford to retire was considered rich. Social Security and retirement was still to come in later years. If a man retired in those years he was either rich or too sick to work and thus a burden on his family, or he was a veteran of a past war and had a veteran's government pension. The people on Quapaw had large mansion-like homes.

As I stated above, the news reported that every week or so there was a report of a burglary. This particular prior report was that a man had been murdered after he returned from a dance at the roof garden on top of the Como Hotel. The report was that he had returned home on Quapaw about 3 a.m. and as he entered turned on the light, and went to the bottom of the stairway. At this point he took hold of a long drape or curtain which decorated the entrance to a downstairs room. The burglar was behind it and, supposedly in fright, shot the owner, who died.

The family called the police, who came and brought bloodhounds ... to sniff the trail from the house down Quapaw to West Grand and to the black section of town on Malvern Avenue. The dogs reportedly went directly to the home of the black man who was later hanged. The man's wife told the police her husband was in the bedroom where he was found fully clothed and under the bed.

I have heard that the Klan hanged the black man. In the 1920s the Klan did parade in Hot Springs and I saw it. At the head of the parade rode a man on a horse carrying a large fiery cross. Next came the robed Klansmen, four abreast. It seems they rode by for an hour; I have never seen so many civilians in uniform before or since. In fact, the marching I saw by soldiers on parade in Abilene, Texas, during World War II reminded me of the Klan's march that night in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Malcolm L. Rigsby is assistant professor of sociology and coordinator of criminal justice at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia.

Editorial on 08/31/2014

An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Malcolm Rigsby's name was Malcolm Grigsby. The change is reflected in the story above.

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