The Lynching of Jack Wilson and Why It Matters Today
An 1892 lynching in my hometown didn’t follow the usual Jim Crow-era script. My journey to figure out why.
Five names stared at me, inscribed on one of the 800 rusty steel blocks suspended from the ceiling at National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery last January.
William Thomas. Martin Love. Lee McDaniel. Jack Wilson. A.L. McCamy.
Each block lists the names of individuals lynched during the Jim Crow era in a county. This particular block was for Whitfield County, Georgia, where I grew up. Five Black men lynched in my hometown. Five Black men I had never heard of. Five stories I now needed to learn.
In the months that followed, I scoured local newspaper articles published in the days following each lynching, read history books, and asked locals to recount their memories. Details were hard to come by. But one story, that of Jack Wilson, jumped to life. The aftermath differed from most Jim Crow-era lynchings. My winding journey to figure out why resulted in a more genuine understanding of Whitfield County and the century-long era between Civil War and civil rights, a time period we White folks often skip over in the racial history of our country. And, most importantly, it pushed me to have more humility about my role in the current moment.
What Happened
At two in the morning on Sunday, October 23, 1892, a masked mob of 150 White men with torches stormed into the town of Dalton, the Whitfield County seat of 4,000 tucked in the foothills of the northwest Georgia mountains. They extinguished streetlights, fired guns into the air, and forced local law enforcement at gunpoint to lead them to the tenement home of two Black families. They broke down the door, shot and killed one resident, Jack Wilson, beat his wife, and whipped another man in front of the house. Then, as quickly as they entered, they rode off eastward into the night.
Up to this point, the story follows the narrative of most Jim Crow era lynchings. Typically, what happens next is outright celebration or, at best, passive indifference from the local White population. But not with Jack Wilson’s lynching.
The town awoke in uproar. Local White pastors condemned the violence from the pulpit. At a called meeting outside the courthouse that afternoon, Mayor John Black addressed an angry crowd of 1,000 gathered to hear what Dalton’s leadership would do about it. In the meeting, over 100 men committed funds totaling $750 — more than $21,000 in today’s money — to track down and punish the mob. The coroner empaneled a grand jury to investigate. Local national guard captain, T.C. Thompson, requested assistance from Georgia Governor William Northen.
In the following week’s edition of the North Georgia Citizen, the local newspaper, Dalton leaders outlined these steps in lengthy statement, beginning like this:¹
The citizens of Dalton, in mass meeting assembled, without regard to race or color, do declare to the world, that so far as we know, or believe, we live in a city of 4000 inhabitants that is as free of violations of law as any on the continent. Its educational and religious privileges are of the highest order. Its citizenship, white and black, are industrious, thrifty, frugal and intelligent. . . .
The murdered man was a good citizen and had the respect and confidence of our entire people, and we meet upon this Lord’s day, in answer to the call announced from every pulpit in the city, to condemn the acts of the mob and to pledge ourselves and use money to the utmost endeavor to ferret out the perpetrators and punish them to the full extent of the law. . . .
We hereby pledge ourselves, collectively and individually, to protect any and everybody in freely giving all facts they may know that will lead to the detection of the criminals. We do declare, here and now, that these night marauders and murderers must quench their thirst for blood somewhere else, and that no threats of assassination will deter us from executing our purpose.
The statement concludes with a list of all 100+ donors, a who’s who of Dalton’s political and business leaders. The overwhelming show of unity seemed intent on warding off future attacks, while also declaring to the world that the attack was an aberration rather than the norm.
As I reviewed the list, the story quickly became personal. My great great grandfather’s name, T. R. Jones, topped the list with a $25 donation. Until then, I didn’t know much about him other than what was written on the back of the faded black and white portrait hanging to the left of my parents’ front door — he had served as president of the local Crown Cotton Mill and as a state senator.
In the weeks that followed, the North Georgia Citizen continued to provide updates, but the passion dwindled. Days after the town meeting, the Governor issued a proclamation ordering state and military officers “to be vigilant” and assist in apprehending the “disguised murderers.” He offered a $200 reward for apprehension and sent twenty-three 45-calibre rifles and ammunition to be distributed to volunteers for protection. Two weeks later, the grand jury called more witnesses. One witness reported seeing the mob earlier in the night gathered at a church six miles east of town in Murray County, a hotbed of Klan activity. Another said that one of the attackers had to be carried out of town and may have died. On January 19, several Black citizens received anonymous notes warning them to leave town. Soon after, the city council set aside $50 to aid in prosecution of Wilson’s murder. At the end of March, though, Governor Northen recalled the rifles to quell similar violence elsewhere in Georgia. Two weeks later, the paper provided a one-line update that the grand jury was still diligent in prosecuting and may be done within a week. The April 20 newspaper, however, is missing from the record, and the events aren’t mentioned again for at least the six months that follow. It’s possible that the April 20th newspaper provides those details, but the lack of mention of any court proceedings in the months that followed makes it more likely that the grand jury made no charges.²
The lack of closure left me unsettled — I still had burning questions. What made Dalton’s leaders respond in outrage instead of indifference? What led them to take significant steps, at least initially, to track down the mob? Could Dalton, including my great great grandfather, have been more forward thinking on racial issues than others at the time?
Protecting Black citizens from racial violence
I started with the question of whether they were ahead of their time on race. I journeyed back to the newspaper account of the last lynching in town, that of Lee McDaniel, which happened only three months earlier. If concern over racial injustice motivated the response, then surely locals would be outraged then too.
Accused of attempted assault against Clemmie Wood, a 15-year-old White girl, McDaniel was arrested within a day of the supposed attack. After a quick trial, law enforcement were transporting him to the jail at dusk when a similar-sized mob blocked their path, kidnapped McDaniel, and then hung him from a tree next to the train tracks. His body remained on display until noon the next day for “hundreds” to see. The newspaper’s matter of fact account hinted that most everyone had already heard the details, but no one seemed outraged at the rush to justice or the ugliness of the public spectacle.³
Another example six months after Wilson’s lynching provides a similar picture. The North Georgia Citizen recounted a Texas lynching of a Black man accused of a murdering a White girl. It concluded by saying, “Served him right. A little of this kind of treatment may put a stop to these heinous crimes.”⁴
So, when the lynching served a purpose that locals thought justified, they followed the familiar pattern of either support or indifference.
Ensuring political control: the election of 1892
With anger over racial injustice now unlikely, I moved to the next possibility — politics. In the weeks surrounding Wilson’s murder, I noticed that the North Georgia Citizen dedicated significant coverage of state and national elections. In fact, the lynching’s date, October 22, 1892, fell two weeks after state elections but two weeks before the presidential election, both contentious contests between Democrats, Republicans, and Populists.
Most telling about the role of politics were local leaders’ quotes defending Jack Wilson’s character in the newspaper. Mayor Black, having employed Mr. Wilson as a seasonal worker for six years, defended him by writing, “I am informed that certain parties have intimated that politics had something to do with the death. . . . He has always asked me how I was going to vote and has invariably voted the democratic ticket with me.” The North Georgia Citizen struck a similar tune, “No reason has been assigned for the outrage. Both of the colored men voted straight democratic tickets in the State election, and one of them has never been anything but a democrat.”⁵
Their quick denunciation of political motives — rather than appeals to his character — begs a few questions. Was political violence so common that many would have assumed such motive had they not addressed it? And, perhaps worse, would local leaders have opposed Wilson’s lynching with the same vigor if he had voted for the Populist or Republican tickets?
At the time, local political and business leaders, along with the newspapers they owned, were decidedly Democratic, while many farmers and mill workers were defecting to the up-and-coming Populist party, which had been courting Black and rural White voters. In the state election held two weeks before Wilson’s murder, Democrats had carried Whitfield County with 57% of the vote, a far smaller margin than past elections. With the presidential election two weeks away, Democrats weren’t taking any chances.⁶
Black men were critical swing votes, and violence was a powerful tool to keep them from the polls or from straying from the Democratic ticket. At the time Georgia was one of only five states without secret ballots, so targeted retribution was easy. In fact, as many as 15 Black Georgia citizens were killed in connection with the 1892 elections. In some counties, Black voters were forced to the polls and required to vote Democratic, in some cases multiple times.⁷
Given this context, political intimidation would have been front and center of peoples’ minds as they sought answers. And, the reality that the mob hailed from Populist-leaning rural areas east of Dalton made it more important for local political and business leaders to distance themselves from it. So, that’s what they did.
Protecting Dalton’s reputation: a model of the “New South”
As I wrestled with the political motive, I stumbled into another possible explanation — Dalton’s burgeoning reputation as a growing industrial town emblematic of the “Modern South,” and the PR campaign to keep it that way.
Located along the rebuilt Western and Atlantic railroad line between Chattanooga and Atlanta, Dalton’s population more than doubled in the 30 years following the Civil War. It established itself as an industrial center with the founding of Crown Cotton Mill and other industries in the 1880s, forerunners of the textile industry that drives the local economy today. Town leaders were eager to market Dalton as a forward-looking city to attract workers and investment. In 1887, the Atlanta Constitution ran an article titled, “DALTON! North Georgia’s Little City Enjoying a Season of Progress.”⁸ The author interviewed local leaders about the town’s post-war rebirth and profiled its success.
Uncontrolled mob violence stained that image. In fact, locals had been down this road before and seen how it could damage Dalton’s reputation. Seven years before Wilson’s murder, a similar late-night Klan mob killed two Black residents, terrorized multiple other White and Black residents, and left a list of wide-ranging demands on the mayor’s front porch, who then published the demands in the newspaper. The story quickly spread across the state and nation, making Dalton’s leadership appear spineless in the face of the Klan. Who would want to move to or invest in a town driven by vigilante mob justice?
But do we see evidence of this in the weeks following Wilson’s lynching? Two weeks after Wilson’s lynching, a real estate ad in the North Georgia Citizen signaled this dynamic in blatant terms, saying that the return of the Klan had “knocked the prices from under property.” It continued, “Sold to whites only. If you can prevail upon the Ku Klux to let Dalton alone, those lots will bring three times what I ask for them in less than a year.”⁹
This sentiment may be best captured in an April 1893 editorial in the Dalton Argus, the other industrialist-owned local paper, entitled “Effect of Ku Klux: They Ruin a City, Depopulate a County and Create Anarchy. ” It read:¹⁰
No law abiding man wants to invest his money in a hot-bed of white caps, and we need not expect the rich resources of this county developed so long as the present state of affairs continues. And that is not all, the best people of the county are moving out of it — those who can, and others would go, if they could sell their property. These two last ku-klux raids have lowered the value of taxable property in this county at least $150,000, and let her citizens work as they may, it will be five years before this great loss can be outgrown.
The donations, guns for protection, and grand jury investigation communicated that this behavior wouldn’t be tolerated. From this vantage point, what stands out is a focus on protection of property value, investment, and image. Jack Wilson seemed secondary to those ideals. Once the threat to Dalton’s image waned and life resumed normalcy, the response had served its purpose. The quest for justice dissipated.
Does it matter?
As I came to this landing point, something still didn’t sit right. Something was incomplete. While reflecting on the lack of closure, I began to question whether the possible explanations missed the point. Regardless of which explanation is more accurate, both scenarios involve conflicts between White citizens over power and influence. Both use a Black citizen’s death as a pawn in that effort.
Think about Lee McDaniel’s lynching three months earlier. It took less than a day for police to track him down before the mob played its own version of jury, judge, and executioner with the passive blessing of local leadership. And yet, when the tables were turned to a more serious crime against a Black victim, the investigation came up empty despite the mob’s size and brazenness. From that lens, it becomes clear that locals viewed Jack Wilson as a “good negro” who worked faithfully and voted like he should. He was just a means to an end — whether political or economic — rather than a fellow human being worthy of defense.
Like pouring kerosene on rain-soaked logs and lighting a match, the passions flamed high after Wilson’s murder but burned out quickly, leaving the conditions that led to the lynching unchanged.
Now, it’s easy to stand on the pedestal of hindsight and look down with condemnation. But then I had to ask myself, would I have done any different? Just like it’s easy to look at Peter denying Jesus three times and believe that I would never betray him like that, it’s easy to look back at lynchings of the past and believe I would never turn a blind eye either. Maybe, as in the case of Jack Wilson, I would have been outraged like my great great grandfather and others. But would I have persisted until Jack Wilson had justice? Or, as time passed would I have moved on with my life because I didn’t feel danger or my interests were safe? White folks had the luxury of doing that, and that’s the account we hear, if we hear about it at all. We don’t hear his wife’s perspective or how the murder affected future generations. We don’t hear about the Black families who went to sleep wondering whether their front door would be next. Those voices might have had the staying power to keep attention on justice, but they were background noise in 1892.
And then I think about today. How often have we been outraged by the killing of Black men and women like Philando Castille, Ahmaud Arbery, or Breonna Taylor? Unlike 1892, we have the benefit of their families’ voices, of cell phone cameras, and of widespread media coverage to keep our attention. As a result, many of us White folks have been listening and lamenting in ways we never have before. It’s necessary. It’s uncomfortable.
Still, when solutions aren’t easy, when the focus moves elsewhere, when I don’t feel danger, and when my interests are safe, will I move on just like they did? Will you?
Or, will we remain intentional to keep Black voices at the forefront, to make their pain ours, and to advocate for justice? If we’re not careful, we may repeat the familiar pattern, setting the stage for another Jack Wilson or Breonna Taylor, whether it’s next month or next year.
In fall 2021, I transitioned my writing from Medium to a Substack called Southbound, where I explore overlooked stories of the South and wrestle with how they affect us today. I no longer actively monitor this page. You can access this same article on that site here, and sign up to receive future stories by email for free using this link.
Footnotes
[1] “Masked Mob. A Night of Horror and Bloodshed.” North Georgia Citizen, October 27, 1892, p. 3. Presented online by the Digital Library of Georgia.
[2] Accounts of the story pulled from North Georgia Citizen issues from the following dates: October 27, November 3, January 19, 1893, February 2, March 30, and April 13. Presented online by the Digital Library of Georgia.
[3] “Lee McDaniel Lynched.” North Georgia Citizen, August 4, 1892, p. 2. Presented online by the Digital Library of Georgia.
[4] “No Title.” North Georgia Citizen, February 9, 1893, p. 3. Presented online by the Digital Library of Georgia.
[5] “Masked Mob. A Night of Horror and Bloodshed.” North Georgia Citizen, October 27, 1892, p. 3. Presented online by the Digital Library of Georgia.
[6] Flamming, Douglass. Creating the Modern South: Millhands & Managers in Dalton, Georgia, 1884–1984. University of North Carolina Press, 1992 . (72)
[7] Grant, Donald. The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia. Birch Lane Press, 1993. (195–201)
[8] “DALTON! North Georgia’s Little City Enjoying a Season of Progress.” Atlanta Constitution. April 17, 1887. Accessed in Creating the Modern South: Millhands & Managers in Dalton, Georgia, 1884–1984.
[9] “No Title” North Georgia Citizen, November 10, 1892, p. 3. Presented online by the Digital Library of Georgia.
[10] “Effect of Ku Klux: They Ruin a City, Depopulate a County and Create Anarchy.” Dalton Argus. April 8, 1893 Editorial republished from Spring Place Jimplecute. Accessed from Crown Gardens & Archives.
