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100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady - Crime - Nairaland

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100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by project8(m): 6:21am On Nov 21, 2019
The average white man or woman in the face of denunciation by Blacks about the aggression meted out to them are quick to point out that perhaps the melanated victim did something to provoke the authority often the police and so the talk is perhaps if Blacks were to dress better or be meek, the aggression of white bullies some with police uniforms would lessen but the evidence does not support such claims.

A cursory picture of hanged Blacks in the U.S and other accounts show most of them in suits or overcoats and often they met their deaths while minding their business till a white person decided to have some fun with their deaths. Even babies were not spared whimsical deaths.

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Seeking a better life, Hartfield left his home in Ellisville and resided in East St. Louis. He had managed to sustain a relationship with his lady-love Ruth Meeks who happened to be white discreetly, however, upon his return to Ellisville 1919, the relationship became known to some white men.

It didn’t matter that these men were not involved with Ms. Meeks but for being a Black man and being intimate with a white woman of a race they claimed was superior, a death sentence was passed on Hartfield.
Needing something to pin so they can visit violence on him, the assailants claimed he raped Meeks, adding she was 18 while the lady was actually in her mid-twenties.

Hartfield, to preserve his now precarious life managed to elude the vile men baying for his life for several weeks but undeterred, Sheriff Allen Boutwell in Laurel raised donations to fund a hunting party with Bloodhounds at the request of Sheriff Harbison.

Now a man on the run, Hartfield was finally apprehended attempting to board a train on June 24, and was turned over to Sheriff Harbison, who placed him in the charge of a deputy and left town. The deputy immediately released him to a mob.


The Jackson Daily News, the New Orleans States, and other newspapers ran headlines that “John Hartfield will be lynched by Ellisville mob at 5:00 this afternoon” and additional text that “The officers have agreed to turn him over to the people of the city at 4 o’clock this afternoon when it is expected he will be burned”.

Kris Graves (American, born 1982). <em>The Lynching Location of John Hartfield (1919), Ellisville, Mississippi</em>, 2017. Inkjet print, sheet: 17 x 22 in. . Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 2017.25.5. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Image courtesy of Kris Graves, CUR.2017.25.5_KrisGraves_photograph.jpg)
The Lynching Location of John Hartfield (1919), Ellisville, Mississippi, 2017. (Photo: Image courtesy of Kris Graves.)


For newspapers which are to safeguard the best interest of society to unashamedly publish the notice of the capture of an innocent man and a note that he will be burned erases doubt that the lynching was institutional and it was a clear indication that it had become the norm such that whites who might have found it abhorrent and didn’t appear to be enthusiastic about it risked having harm visited on them.

Another curiosity with Hartfield’s lynching was that with his capture, he had been wounded at the shoulder but guess what, a white doctor, A. J. Carter, was procured for him to treat his wounds just to keep him alive long enough to be murdered.

Post image
via reddit.com
And so at 5:00 PM on June 26, 1919, a large cheering crowd assembled to watch the premeditated murder of Hartfield. Theodore Bilbo, the governor of Mississippi, took no action. With the murder announced a day in advance in major newspapers, a crowd of as many as 10,000 watched while Hartfield was hanged, shot and burned with pieces of his corpse chopped off and sold as souvenirs.

Hartfield was hanged from a gum tree alongside nearby railroad tracks, riddled with bullets, and then burned. White men, women, and children had travelled from throughout the state to watch his gruesome murder. Commemorative postcards of the lynching were created and sold afterwards.

Governor Bilbo declared: “This is a white man’s country, with a white man’s civilization and any dream on the part of the Negro race to share social and political equality will be shattered in the end.”

Those who experienced Hartfield’s lynching describe it as an act of terrorism aimed at intimidating the entire black community compelling many to flee in fear for their own lives.

Since Hartfield was formerly a slave, he never received a birth certificate so his age when he died is unknown.

Hundred years on after Hartfield was desecrated for no criminal conduct nor for toppling a government but for daring to love without color bias, we remember an ancestor and may he rest in power


https://face2faceafrica.com/article/100-years-ago-john-hartfield-was-hanged-shot-roasted-for-dating-a-white-lady-and-his-body-parts-shared-to-spectators

Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Authoreety: 6:30am On Nov 21, 2019
Real terrible things wr done in the past o...

2 Likes

Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Jabioro: 6:34am On Nov 21, 2019
The life and the world itself was wicked to some..the spherical circle call planet was good to some and it was called favour while some suffered for what they knew nothing about and some enjoy what they didn't work for..May we be at right place always..

7 Likes

Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by kelvinkelvinkk(m): 6:35am On Nov 21, 2019
Wow...unthinkable.
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by galadima77(m): 7:04am On Nov 21, 2019
Jabioro:
The life and the world itself was wicked to some..the spherical circle call planet was good to some and it was called favour while some suffered for what they knew nothing about and some enjoy what they didn't work for..May we be at right place always..

Well said

2 Likes

Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Healthyway15: 7:05am On Nov 21, 2019
Racism and terrorism have been in the heart of men since time immemorial. Even if he was guilty, he didn't deserve that much wickedness.


Meanwhile, you can check my signature...
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by TheFacelessMan: 7:18am On Nov 21, 2019
angry

Centuries back, I was almost lynched and burned at the cross by the dreaded Ku Klux Klan KKK.



This is a true life story of survival...
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by giles14(m): 7:46am On Nov 21, 2019
Tomorrow them the white gays go dey form human right enforcer.

Dis people get too many dark history.
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Blakjewelry(m): 7:55am On Nov 21, 2019
yes they called us less than a human in the past but the present is here for us to prove them wrong, no instead of us to work together and make Africa a great continent that will be an envy to the world, we are here making a mess of ourselves. the politicians thieves, the youth upcoming thieves aka yahoo yahoo

1 Like

Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by ruggedtimi(m): 8:03am On Nov 21, 2019
No difference with those people in nigeria that partake in burning alife a thief.
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Dgr8hassiE(m): 8:08am On Nov 21, 2019
[quote author=TheFacelessMan post=84224328] angry

Centuries back, I was almost lynched and burned at the cross by the dreaded Ku Klux Klan KKK.



This is a true life story of survival...
[/
quote]


No wonder you are faceless.
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Depressed101: 9:53am On Nov 21, 2019
Jabioro:
The life and the world itself was wicked to some..the spherical circle call planet was good to some and it was called favour while some suffered for what they knew nothing about and some enjoy what they didn't work for..May we be at right place always..
Amen

1 Like

Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by IamCeazer(m): 9:56am On Nov 21, 2019
And dis ar d same white dat blacks ar being killed 4 scamming. We blacks ar still backward, its jst d plain fact!
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by GODPUNISHALABI: 10:25am On Nov 21, 2019
The best way to die as a black man in the 18 and 1900s is to mistakenly be caught just talking to or even staring at a white woman grin

1 Like

Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by OPONG: 11:17am On Nov 21, 2019
Book of negros cry cry

. he had been wounded at the shoulder but guess what, a white doctor, A. J. Carter, was procured for him to treat his wounds just to keep him alive long enough to be murdered.

Funny shìt

1 Like

Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Nobody: 1:21pm On Nov 21, 2019
I'm sad.......
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Nobody: 1:31pm On Nov 21, 2019
and comment less........
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Deepfeel(m): 1:34pm On Nov 21, 2019
StacyO:
Wow

what are you wowing about, I almost lost my ear to one alhaji for dating his daughter zainab , he wanted to cut my ear grin Na so I for be one ear man
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Nobody: 1:39pm On Nov 21, 2019
Deepfeel:


what are you wowing about, I almost lost my ear to one alhaji for dating his daughter zainab , he wanted to cut my ear grin Na so I for be one ear man
I don comot my hand for your matter.
If you mention me one more time,I'll prepare some proper concoctions you'll not like. N yes,no let my special pezin catch you.
Nonsense and risky.
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Nobody: 1:42pm On Nov 21, 2019
OPONG:
Book of negros cry cry



Funny shìt
That's how it is with whites(might not literarily mean all).
You commit a crime,they fight for you life. Anything possible to keep you alive, after which you're sentenced to court(n the person might be sentenced to death).
Very funny shít.

1 Like 1 Share

Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Deepfeel(m): 1:46pm On Nov 21, 2019
StacyO:

I don comot my hand for your matter.
If you mention me one more time,I'll prepare some proper concoctions you'll not like. N yes,no let my special pezin catch you.
Nonsense and risky.

which your special pezin him no dey fear face undecided I have 3 uncles all military men, one aunty police officer, that your special pezin will pick whether to sleep in a police cell or military cell grin
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by kenir(m): 4:13pm On Nov 21, 2019
Black man wer no fear white toto then, him get sense?
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by crackhouse(m): 5:19pm On Nov 21, 2019
...from the newspaper it said the man assaulted the woman but you are saying he dated the white girl. Which do I follow.
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by ednut1(m): 5:33pm On Nov 21, 2019
Men have done terrible things regardless of race. Why him self dey go follow white woman
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by ikbnice(m): 6:15pm On Nov 21, 2019
When I read NATIVE SON written by an American author Richard Wright in 1940. I was convinced that devil is indeed white and not black as portrayed.

1 Like

Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Kennyswagzz: 6:24pm On Nov 21, 2019
Who cares if they kill the blacks..
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Nobody: 7:21pm On Nov 21, 2019
Deepfeel:


which your special pezin him no dey fear face undecided I have 3 uncles all military men, one aunty police officer, that your special pezin will pick whether to sleep in a police cell or military cell grin
Our bond is unjailable.
And our love is uncellable.
All 5 of you will even start tripping for our something.
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by DonHummer(m): 7:29pm On Nov 21, 2019
I still wonder why the spirits of men killed gruesomely that year don't come back to hunt or block the destiny of the children or generations of their oppressors unlike what is obtainable here in africa
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by losky83: 7:31pm On Nov 21, 2019
project8:

The average white man or woman in the face of denunciation by Blacks about the aggression meted out to them are quick to point out that perhaps the melanated victim did something to provoke the authority often the police and so the talk is perhaps if Blacks were to dress better or be meek, the aggression of white bullies some with police uniforms would lessen but the evidence does not support such claims.

A cursory picture of hanged Blacks in the U.S and other accounts show most of them in suits or overcoats and often they met their deaths while minding their business till a white person decided to have some fun with their deaths. Even babies were not spared whimsical deaths.

Support Pan-African Journalism
SUBSCRIBE


Seeking a better life, Hartfield left his home in Ellisville and resided in East St. Louis. He had managed to sustain a relationship with his lady-love Ruth Meeks who happened to be white discreetly, however, upon his return to Ellisville 1919, the relationship became known to some white men.

It didn’t matter that these men were not involved with Ms. Meeks but for being a Black man and being intimate with a white woman of a race they claimed was superior, a death sentence was passed on Hartfield.
Needing something to pin so they can visit violence on him, the assailants claimed he raped Meeks, adding she was 18 while the lady was actually in her mid-twenties.

Hartfield, to preserve his now precarious life managed to elude the vile men baying for his life for several weeks but undeterred, Sheriff Allen Boutwell in Laurel raised donations to fund a hunting party with Bloodhounds at the request of Sheriff Harbison.

Now a man on the run, Hartfield was finally apprehended attempting to board a train on June 24, and was turned over to Sheriff Harbison, who placed him in the charge of a deputy and left town. The deputy immediately released him to a mob.


The Jackson Daily News, the New Orleans States, and other newspapers ran headlines that “John Hartfield will be lynched by Ellisville mob at 5:00 this afternoon” and additional text that “The officers have agreed to turn him over to the people of the city at 4 o’clock this afternoon when it is expected he will be burned”.

Kris Graves (American, born 1982). <em>The Lynching Location of John Hartfield (1919), Ellisville, Mississippi</em>, 2017. Inkjet print, sheet: 17 x 22 in. . Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the artist, 2017.25.5. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Image courtesy of Kris Graves, CUR.2017.25.5_KrisGraves_photograph.jpg)
The Lynching Location of John Hartfield (1919), Ellisville, Mississippi, 2017. (Photo: Image courtesy of Kris Graves.)


For newspapers which are to safeguard the best interest of society to unashamedly publish the notice of the capture of an innocent man and a note that he will be burned erases doubt that the lynching was institutional and it was a clear indication that it had become the norm such that whites who might have found it abhorrent and didn’t appear to be enthusiastic about it risked having harm visited on them.

Another curiosity with Hartfield’s lynching was that with his capture, he had been wounded at the shoulder but guess what, a white doctor, A. J. Carter, was procured for him to treat his wounds just to keep him alive long enough to be murdered.

Post image
via reddit.com
And so at 5:00 PM on June 26, 1919, a large cheering crowd assembled to watch the premeditated murder of Hartfield. Theodore Bilbo, the governor of Mississippi, took no action. With the murder announced a day in advance in major newspapers, a crowd of as many as 10,000 watched while Hartfield was hanged, shot and burned with pieces of his corpse chopped off and sold as souvenirs.

Hartfield was hanged from a gum tree alongside nearby railroad tracks, riddled with bullets, and then burned. White men, women, and children had travelled from throughout the state to watch his gruesome murder. Commemorative postcards of the lynching were created and sold afterwards.

Governor Bilbo declared: “This is a white man’s country, with a white man’s civilization and any dream on the part of the Negro race to share social and political equality will be shattered in the end.”

Those who experienced Hartfield’s lynching describe it as an act of terrorism aimed at intimidating the entire black community compelling many to flee in fear for their own lives.

Since Hartfield was formerly a slave, he never received a birth certificate so his age when he died is unknown.

Hundred years on after Hartfield was desecrated for no criminal conduct nor for toppling a government but for daring to love without color bias, we remember an ancestor and may he rest in power


https://face2faceafrica.com/article/100-years-ago-john-hartfield-was-hanged-shot-roasted-for-dating-a-white-lady-and-his-body-parts-shared-to-spectators
Then it was whites killing blacks,now it is blacks killing blacks(south africans killing other Africans)
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Deepfeel(m): 7:37pm On Nov 21, 2019
StacyO:

Our bond is unjailable.
And our love is uncellable.
All 5 of you will even start tripping for our something.

what do you know about love undecided
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Larryfest(m): 9:06pm On Nov 21, 2019
Reminds me of Bigger Thomas in the book NATIVE SON by Richard Wrights..The whites were so evil in every form back then.
Re: 100 Years Ago, John Hartfield Was Hanged, Shot, Roasted For Dating A White Lady by Rextizzy: 9:08pm On Nov 21, 2019
Barbarians

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