Special to the News by Tony Gilbert
As Americans celebrated the end of the Great War, on the verge of reveling in a new era of accomplishment known as the Roaring Twenties, the small town of Blakely in southwest Georgia was digging out from under a mountain of national criticism and humiliation. It all began with the following article from the April 5, 1919, issue of the Chicago Defender:
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Blakely, GA., Apr. 4 – When Private William Little, a Negro soldier returning from the war, arrived at the railroad station here several weeks ago, he was encountered by a band of whites. The whites ordered him to doff his Army uniform and walk home in his underwear. Several other whites prevailed upon the hoodlums to leave Little alone and he was permitted to walk home unmolested.
Little continued to wear his uniform over the next few weeks, as he had no other clothing. Anonymous notes were sent him warning him not to wear his Army uniform “too long” and advising him to leave town if he wished to “sport around in khaki.” Little ignored the notes.
Yesterday Private Little was found dead on the outskirts of this city, apparently beaten by a mob. He was wearing his Army uniform.
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The country was outraged at the senseless “lynching” of an American soldier at the hands of a racially motivated mob. Some of the largest newspapers in the country wrote editorials blasting the nefarious deed and literary great Carl Sandburg, then a young Chicago journalist, wrote about the act. Blakely was given the moniker “Meanest Little Town in America.”
One has to wonder what William Little thought of all the hubbub as he went to work each morning in the employ of a white Blakely lawyer – quite alive and well!
The slanderous work of fiction type set in
Chicago could have at least gotten Little’s name correct. His given name was Wilbert.
Born in Early County, Wilbert Little was the son of Benjamin and Lucy Little. Inducted into the army on October 16 of the previous year, Little was stationed at Camp Wheeler in Macon but was discharged without being shipped overseas. On Wilbert Little’s 22nd birthday the Chicago Defender announced his “death” to the world.
The body of Wilbert Little wasn’t found “on the outskirts” of town. That distinction belonged to another soldier whose name has been long forgotten and never even known to the public due to the display of fantasy portrayed in a Chicago newspaper and later etched on the pages of many a history book and research journal.
Except for the initials C.H. marked on his leggings and undershirt and C.L.H., U.S. etched on his watch fob, there was nothing to indicate the name of the victim. He was hurriedly buried as a John Doe and the weekly newspaper, published that very day, described the event under the headline “A Murder Mystery.”
The mystery was solved the following day when word came that a soldier and his automobile had both been reported missing from Dothan, Ala. The body of the slain soldier was hurriedly exhumed.
Mr. E.I. Baker of Dothan traveled to Blakely and identified the body and belongings as those of his brother, Cliff Hughes. Baker returned to Alabama that day with his brother’s body.
Just as the slain soldier’s body was being identified, word came from the Houston County, Ala., sheriff that two white men were attempting to repair, and later sell, an automobile in Whigham, Ga. The two men abandoned the vehicle but were later apprehended by authorities in Thomasville, Ga. Early County Sheriff Jack Howell sent his son, Deputy Sheriff Sid Howell, to bring the men to Blakely for questioning.
The two men used the names West Robinson of Blackshear, Ga., and Albert Thomas of Tarpon Springs, Fla. The Pierce County, Ga., sheriff traveled to Blakely and identified Thomas as one Nolan Williamson who had recently killed a Mr. Joe Prayer and later escaped from a Waycross, Ga., jail.
West Robinson squealed, laying blame on his partner, and provided authorities with specific details of how the body of a soldier with a bullet in his head was found in Early County. The soldier’s death wasn’t so mysterious after all. It was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The escape route of Williamson and Robinson took them to Alabama where they encountered the young soldier in uniform. Whether they approached him while Hughes was on foot or flagged him down while he was driving is unknown. Somehow the pair and Hughes conversed and the escapees asked a favor of the soldier.
“Could you drive us about ten miles? We have to see a man about a job.”
Apparently the soldier kindly agreed and the trio headed east in Hughes’ Model T on the dusty dirt roads of south Alabama. One of the escapees forcibly offered to share the driving chore over the rugged terrain, traveling more than the ten miles needed to see a man about a job.
After crossing the river into Georgia, near what was then the prosperous community of Hilton, the driver purposely choked down the automobile. Hughes got out to crank the Model T and, as he stood with his back to the two men, Williamson shot him in the back of the head, according to Robinson.
Left at that spot, Hughes’ body was discovered the next morning. Within days the mystery of his identity, the nature of his death, and the names of those responsible were fully known. Nolan Williamson went so far as to admit his guilt to the Pierce County sheriff .
Yet the Chicago Defender, apparently taking off on the headline “A Murder Mystery,” created their own Hollywood script which proved more believable to the gullible masses, not that the masses ever heard the true story.
The motive behind their slanderous journalism can only be known to those who chose to publish such misinformation. But the racial climate of Chicago and other large cities in the North and Midwest at that time is well documented.
In the 1910s many African-Africans traveled north where they found jobs aplenty but continued segregation and little good will from the white majority. White hate groups regularly beat, shot and even bombed black residents.
Among the victims were African-American World War I veterans. Violence against this group occurred in both the South and the North, including Chicago.
The summer of 1919, just months after the false report of William Little’s “lynching,” was among the most violent ever in U.S. race relations. Chicago was the bloodiest.
Nearly a century later the “lynching of William Little” is now back in the news. A recent study on lynchings in southern states by the Equal Justice Initiative was released and its findings and excerpts reported in numerous newspapers across this country and abroad.
Highlighted in most of these reports is that “in 1919, a white mob in Blakely, Ga., lynched William Little, a soldier returning from World War I, for refusing to take off his Army uniform.” Neither the EJI nor any of the journalists cared to research the truth before publishing their story.
In the hundreds of reports over the last 96 years regarding the “lynching of William Little,” not once was the true victim identified. In their zeal to create controversy, journalists and researchers have forgotten the one person who should be remembered.
Clifford Hughes was a United States soldier whose kindness to offer a ride to two strangers cost him his life. A week later a Chicago newspaper destroyed any memory of his life.
Clifford Hughes was born Aug. 20, 1894, in Enterprise, Ala., and died March 25, 1919, in Early County. Those who created and those who continue to perpetuate the “lynching of William Little” myth owe an apology to the Hughes family.
And another to the city of Blakely.
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