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Ed. Note: This week marks the 90th anniversary of the attack on John Shillady, the National Secretary of the NAACP, outside the Driskill Hotel. In observation of this mostly forgotten event, partly as a means of reflecting on our city and state's turbulent past, we're reprinting a play written by Austinite Stuart Hersh, entitled Austin in Denial.
Hersh worked for the City of Austin for over three decades in building inspection and code enforcement, and championed efforts in affordable housing. Last year, he volunteered as a neighborhood block walker for the Obama campaign in Albuquerque and, most recently, was a volunteer for Chris Riley's city council campaign in Austin. Stuart has performed Austin in Denial and another piece, entitled Austin 3275, about race relations towards the end of Prohibition, at Hyde Park Theater's annual Frontera Fest. He's currently working on a new play about abolitionist John Brown.
Since Austin in Denial is rather long, we've split it up into two parts, and are publishing the second half today. In today's piece, Hersh explores the events following the lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco in 1916. Washington, an African-American teenager, was convicted of raping a white woman, then tortured, burned alive and lynched from a lamppost. Photographs of Washington's charred corpse are taken, turned into postcards, and distributed around the country as "souvenirs." The entire event is laid out in horrific detail here. If you haven't already checked it out, the first half is available here.
AUSTIN IN DENIAL: PART II
By Stuart Hersh
Shortly after the Waco lynching occurs, the NAACP sends a volunteer, a white woman named Elisabeth Freeman who had been active in the fight for a woman’s right to vote, from its national offices in New York to Waco to investigate the lynching. Since people in Waco feel like they have done nothing wrong, they tell Ms. Freeman exactly why the lynching of Mr. Washington took place. The NAACP publishes her interviews and the photographs from Waco in its magazine, The Crisis. The magazine’s editor, W.E.B. DuBois, helps the NAACP lead the fight for racial equality by chronicling lynching and other forms of violence and injustice throughout the country.
(Move stage right) Over the next three years, the NAACP investigates instances of lynching from around the country. The NAACP’ Executive Secretary John Shillady, a white man and a former social worker, contacts governors anytime a lynching takes place in their state and requests an end to the violence and an investigation of the incident. And the NAACP starts its practice of flying an American flag at half-staff at its New York City headquarters anytime someone is lynched anywhere in the United States.
By 1919, the NAACP in Texas has grown to 31 branches, more branches in cities and towns than any other state in the United States. In addition, there are more than 7,000 NAACP members in Texas, again more members than any other state in the US. But 1919 was a year where African-American communities were under attack in more than 50 cities throughout the country, mostly in the North. Texas was no exception.
(Move stage left) Kilgore, Texas, June 16,1919: Three days before the annual Juneteenth celebration, White citizens in Kilgore murder a Negro dentist from Illinois for associating with a prominent white woman.
(Move stage center) Longview, Texas, July 5, 1919: The day after the celebration of the nation’s birthday, the brothers of the prominent Kilgore woman from Kilgore who had associated with a recently murdered Negro dentist, join other white men In Longview and severely beat and threaten to lynch an African-American school teacher from Longview. The teacher had written an article stating that the dentist murdered in Kilgore a few weeks earlier had attended school in Illinois with the Kilgore woman, and that the two of them were lovers. Whites force the Longview teacher to leave town, and then a crowd of 1,000 white men burn the homes of black residents and black-owned businesses in Longview.
(Move stage center) The events in Kilgore and Longview alarm African Americans throughout Texas, for neither local nor state officials were doing anything to stop the violence. The Texas NAACP calls for its members and other citizens to urge community leaders to protest the attacks in Kilgore and Longview. But the response is not what they hoped for.
A legislator in Austin introduces a bill to ban the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as an organization in Texas. The Texas Adjutant General, the man who supervised the Texas Rangers, issues a subpoena for all of the Texas NAACP's records.
The Texas Attorney General shuts down the Austin branch of the NAACP and seizes their records. By early August 1919, NAACP officials in Austin are in a panic and ask for help from the NAACP national office in New York. Executive Secretary John Shillady agrees to come to Austin.
(Go to kitchen table, secure a newspaper and move stage right)
Wednesday, August, 21, 1919: The Austin Statesman reports that John Shillady, Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, arrives by train in Austin to meet with state officials about why they closed the Austin branch two weeks earlier. Shillady, a white man, meets with Texas Attorney General C.M. Cureton and is told that the NAACP is operating in Texas as a foreign corporation without a Texas charter.
Shillady is told that the NAACP had no permit to do business in Texas, and disbanding the Austin NAACP is in local hands. Shillady meets with Adjutant General Cope and is told that the Texas Rangers had found that associations that teach "racial equality were creating race trouble between whites and Negroes." Judge M. Michael Johnson calls Shillady later in the day before "a court of inquiry", but none of the details of the court proceeding are revealed. Travis County Judge Dave Pickle warns Shillady to leave Austin.
(Return to kitchen table, secure newspaper and move stage center)
Headline in the Austin Statesman, Thursday, August 22, 1919:
WHITE SECRETARY NEGRO SOCIETY CHASED OUT OF CITY. SHILLADY GETS SEVERE BEATING.
JUDGE PICKLE AND CONSTABLE HAMBY IMPRESS OFFICIAL IN VIGOROUS MANNER
The Austin Statesman reports that John Shillady holds a meeting with local Negroes early in the morning at Hugh Womack’s ice cream parlor and grocery store on East Sixth Street.
At about 10 a.m., on his way back to his room at the Driskill Hotel, Shillady is accosted by County Constable Charles Hamby at the corner of Sixth and Brazos. Constable Hamby asks Shillady if he has been meeting with colored people and "stirring up more trouble than Austin citizens can get rid of in ten years."
Shillady responds, "You don’t see my point of view."
At that point, Constable Hamby strikes Shillady squarely in the right eye and says, "I'll fix you so you can't see."
Immediately, Judge Dave Pickle and Ben Pierce join in and beat Shillady until his face bleed freely and he "[asks] for mercy." (By the way, Judge Pickle would recall years later that "He (Shillady) was apparently advocating social equality between Blacks and Whites. We gave him a pretty good thrashing." Shillady later says that they beat him until he could feel the blood flowing from his face. He says that he begged them not to kill him, and eventually they stopped.) Constable Hamby and Officer Ochiltree escort Shillady to the train station, where he purchases a ticket to St. Louis. They put him on the train to St. Louis at 12:20 p.m. and warn him not to get off the train until he was out of Texas.(Return to kitchen table, secure newspaper and move stage right) The story attracted national attention as well.
The New York Times, Thursday August 22, 1919:
AUSTIN, TEXAS—John R. Shillady, a white man, Secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was severely beaten and placed on board an outbound train for St. Louis today.
Travis County Judge David J. Pickle declared that Shillady had been "inciting negroes against the whites," and had been warned to leave Austin. Judge Pickle said the attack on Shillady was made by himself, Constable Charles Hamby and Ben Pierce, none of whom, he declared, would shirk responsibility in the matter.
"I told him," the Judge said, "that his actions were inciting the negroes against the whites and would cause trouble, and warned him to leave town. I told him our negroes would cause no trouble if left alone. Then I whipped him and ordered him to leave because I thought it was for the best interest of Austin and the State."
(Return to kitchen table, secure newspaper, and move stage center)
Friday, August 23, 1919. The New York Times reports that Texas Governor William Hobby holds a press conference and tells everyone that the injuries to John Shillady in Austin were Shillady’s own fault.
The Governor tells the NAACP and Shillady to "go to hell" in response to a telegram sent by Mary White Ovington, Chair of the NAACP.
Governor Hobby said, "Shillady was the only offender in connection with the matter referred to in your telegram, and he was punished before your inquiry came. Your organization can contribute more to the advancement of both races by keeping your representatives and their propaganda out of this State than in any other way."
The intimidation works. John Shillady never fully recovers from the beating, and resigns his position with the NAACP. The Austin chapter of the NAACP is disbanded, and would not become active again until the 1940s. Throughout Texas, NAACP membership plummets. By 1923, there are only five NAACP chapters remaining in Texas. The system of segregation represented by Jim Crow remain firmly in place for a long time.
But W.E.B. DuBois and the NAACP don't give up the fight for advancement. DuBois writes a short story to commemorate the events in Waco, Kilgore, Longview and Austin. He calls it "Jesus Christ in Texas." But that’s another play for another day.
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Interesting history lesson. It helps explain why Austin is such a great place to live today.