On October 25, 1915, the barn of a white man, Gabe Franks, was burned down in a suspected arson. Franks used bloodhounds in an attempt to track down the arsonist, to no avail. Somehow, they concluded the perpetrator was Cordella Stevenson’s son, though he hadn’t been seen in the area for several months. Police arrested Cordella and her husband, Arch Stevenson, and grilled them for information about her son. Police were finally convinced of the innocence of the couple and released them after six days.
A month later, a white mob broke down the door of their home and held Arch Stevenson at gunpoint while they took Cordella away. When he got a chance, Arch Stevenson ran away and escaped among a hail of bullets. Cordella wouldn’t be so fortunate.
On December 9, the body of Cordella Stevenson was found naked, just north of the Mobile & Ohio R.R. station near Columbus, MS., visible to the thousands of railroad passengers that passed while she hung there. The newspaper reported, “The condition of the body showed plainly that she had been mistreated.” To be clear, she was raped multiple times before she was hung.
The Justice of the Peace was called to conduct a judicial inquiry, but he was out of town, so the body continued to hang for a day until his return. The jury determined Stevenson died by persons unknown. The Black-owned Chicago Defender reported:
“It was the same old verdict that all southern juries return in the cases of this kind,”
The white papers needed to report something, given the number of people who witnessed Stevenson’s naked, hanging body. They said she was hanged because she was believed to have burned down the barn, which everyone knew not to be true.
The Columbus-Lowndes Public Library mysteriously has no copies of the weekly Columbus Commercial for 1915 and The Columbus Dispatch during that year. It was almost if, no exactly if, they decided to erase the record.
The Jackson Daily News reported on December 15, 1915, the following:
“If the laws of Mississippi stand for anything, the perpetrators of this dastardly deed should receive due punishment. . . . Should this murder remain unnoticed, it will be a reproach on the escutcheon of Lowndes.”
Over 100 years later, I think it’s safe to say the laws of Mississippi stood for nothing, as no perpetrators ever received punishment.
Author’s Note: The photos of lynched women I reviewed in looking for a cover photo were truly disturbing. I had to take a time out.
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This post was previously published on AfroSapiophile.
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