by Roy Wilkins
The following essay wu introduced in the original with the italicized para-
aph. and ,it needs no dditional introduction. '
ThU article wa.r written from Associated Press news dispatches. Since
that time liJter repons have reached The Crisis thai William and Cora
Waln were not occupying the caretaker's cottage at a cemetery, but
were living in their own home at the edge 0/ the cemetery. It if re­
ported tha: efJorts have been made over a period 0/ thirteen years
to oust them from their property. They refused to seU. Some year, ago
the citycondemned a part of their land to expand the cemetery. Their
final refusal to vacate their home if said to have led to the battle.
The community WAf out to "get" them. It is also reported that the
white woman alleged to have been threatened by Wales vigorously
denied that he threatened her-a/ter Wales was dead.
Too often the story Qf tbe Southern Negro deals exclusively with
those wh2J are timid. The truth is that colored people in the South
would not be where they are today if it were not for the colored
men and women who dare to speak out and, if necessary, to act, at
the right times. ,
Southern white people, almost unanimously, characterize such Ne­
groes as "crazy." A colored man who r�ses to be shoved into the
pattern they have set for the race, who �sts and who fights when
fighting is called for is labeled a lunatic.
The newspapers of Saturday, May 16, and Sunday, May 17, carried
a story of stubborn, thr�g, "crazy" bravery by an aging colored man
and his sister, and of cruel, stial, atavistic degeneracy by some white
people in and around Gordonsville, Va.
A mob of 5,000 persons including all the sheriffs, constables, depu­
ties and state police for miles around, armed with everything from
machine guns on down, was held at bay by a 60-year-old Negro man
and his 62-yeac-old sister for six hours. The pitched battle of 0 against
five thousand was finally won by the mob only after a gasoline-soaked
torch wa tos ed into the hou e and the occupants burned to death.
Even as the flames ate away at their fortress, the man and woman
within kept up their rifle and hot-gun fire until the blazing roof caved
in upon their heads. Then, as Cora Wales was silhouetted m rcilessly
against the firelight, machine guns in the hands of the superior race
cut her down in 3 hail of bullets. Her brother, with the walls of his
home now toppling in the raging fire, appeared at a doorway only to be
shot down.
It would appear to all normal persons that with death would come
the end of the episode. But not so here. Impatiently the mob waited
hours for the embers of the bouse to coot. Then, like a pack of maniacs
th killers rushed in and chopped up the two bodies for souvenirs to
carry home. Even piece of bone were carried away. H the tradition
of American lynchers was faithfully followed, there reposes now on
the mantelpieces of many a Virginia home a bit of flesh or a bone
preserved in a jar of alcohol to remind children and grandchildren
of the indomitable courage of a brother, father or son of the family
who b ttled to the death to prevent two egroes from overcoming
5,000 white Virginians.
U one has a fancy for words, this killing, was not a lynching. It
was sport=sport on a grand cale. Hunting 'po sum compared to this
i tiddlywinks. Beside it fox-buntlng, as practised by the F.F.V .,
paJes into a child's game. Here were a man and a woman cooped
up in a frame house and all one had to do was shoot. All rul re
off. Anything went.
There was light flaw in the et-up, however. The man nd
woman had arms and they were not afraid to shoot. They h d killed
a sheriff and wounded five others. The leaders of the five thousand
looked about and took counsel together. They had numbers. They had
machine guns. They h d sulphur bombs. They had tear gas bombs.
But the two in the house ha� rifles, shotguns and perhaps a pistol or
two. Not so good. Not half as good as one lone Negro with nothing
but his bare hands, easily dangled at the end of a rope by two or
three hundred men; his' waying body a snap target for dozens of guns
in the mob. A hanging, manacled Negro cannot shoot. back. No, this
was a different proeosltion, .
So, otf went a request to the United States Marine Corps at Quan­
tico, Va., for a few squ ds of Leathernecks, a few tanks and a few
of Uncle Sam's machine guns. (And how those Marines would have
loved to have gonet) You see, gentle reader, the federal government
must never interfere with the citizens of a sovereign state who wish to
stage lynchings, but it is all right for the sovereign states to call on
United States troops when some Negro is crazy enough not to want to
be lynched. What the hell is the government for, anyway?
This wa laying it on a bit thick, however, not for the Marines,
but for the government, and therefore the request was turned down.
The 5,000 were left to shift for themselves. They feU back and waited
for darkness. Under the helpful-and healthful-cover of night the
torch was tossed and then it was only a matter of time before the
famed G=Men had to take a back seat for real killers,
Th story goes that one member of the mob was a 12-year-old
boy armed with a .22 calibre rifte. His small sister is aid to have
gone among the 5,000 begging ammu�tion for her valiant kin
The story behind the slaughter at Gordonsville is that William Wales
and his sister, living in the caretaker' cottage of a cemetery, had been
notified to move. For some reason not stated by tbem or their mur­
derers, they chose not to move. It is reported that the two patrolled
their yard with firearm to balk eviction. With such determined oppo­
sition, the local whites .were forced to fall. back, upon what they are
pleased to call strategy. This proved to be thyime-wbrn device of
dragging some white woman into the quarrel and charging Wales with -
threatening her.
We have no knowledge of whether Wales threatened to kill a white
woman who remonstrated with him about remaining in the house.
Wales is dead. His sister i dead. In the face of machine guns, bombs,
arson and the carving of human flesh, the colored people in the
vicinity who might know mething ar�ute. We do know
that the trick of involving.3 white wom�n .�� �_�o in some man­
n r is an old one, trotted out time and time again a a preliminary
to a lynching.
In May, 1930, George Hughe was working orr a farm near Sher­
man, Tex. He complained to his white farm boss that his wages were
hort the agreed amount By nightfall Hughe was in jail charged with
"attempted rape" of the farm bo 's wife. By the next morning Hughe
was a roa ted corpse in the steel vault 01 the courthouse, where he
had been placed for .. afekeeping" from mob which halted at
nothing-not even the burning down of the courthouse.
There are dozens of other imilar torie. It is an old trick, thi
white woman business. aybe it was true at Gordonsville, maybe ....
Anyway the heriff )wore out a warrant charging Wales with lunacy.
(As was tated above: any Negro in the South who talk back to hite
people or who wants to fight white people i regarded a a Iunatie.)
When the hcrifl appeared to rve the warrant he was shot and killed.
That et the stag . Here as egro who would' not " ct riab "
Furthermore he had killed heriff- bite man. The lid
It was a free-for-all. Anybody could do anything. The white r ee m
be vindicated. White upremacy must be maintained. The ord ined of
,
God must not be challenged. The Negro must be kept in the place the
Lord made for him. So the five thousand again t two. So the machine
guns against shotguns. So the carving of bloody, roasted ftesh.
But William Wales did kill a sheriff, did he not? Are the colored
people for law and order? Does The Crisis mean to imply by this
article that its policy is to defend colored people who kill sheriffs?
The answer is that colored People have to be for law and order
even though the law h given them little protection. They are a
relatively helpless minority. They have to place their reliance in the
law which the powerful ajority has made. But that does not mean
that they necessarily approve of the law or the way it is administered,
or of the people who administer it. All too infrequently they express
their disapproval and resentment in a forthright manner. The) have
good cause to resort to direct action. It is a marvel of the age that
they have been so meek and mild. They know the law is stacked
agains all poor people, and pecially against Negroes. Yet they tum
to it, sensing with that insight that has enabled them to survive in a
ho tile land, that they as a group are not in a position to change the
law by democratic means or defy it with arms.
William Wales had had his fill of white people and their ways as
expressed around Gordonsville. He probably decided that he did not
intend to stand any more from the system set up and maintained to
exploit, humiliate and crush him. No one knows now' the workings
of his mind. He probably felt that in this matter he was right nd
that he was not going to "knuckle under" to the white folk no matter
what happened. Death w s ' preferable to life as he had been forced
to live it. •
As Wales looked back upon his sixty year what did he see? He
saw courts controlled by whites, responsive to whites, giving verdicts
. pleasing to whites. He saw his race's children cheated out of the
schooling for which their parents paid tax. . to the state. He saw
separation of the races everywhere, with his having always the little
end of the deal. He saw jobs, health, opportunity, prestige, family life
and success denied upon the flimsy excuse of skin color. He saw
his people hanged, roasted and mutilated y obs W 1 e I;gislators
called points of order and an aspirant to- the Pr ide y fiddled with
clauses, phrases, period and 'commas in the o-called Bill of Rights.
All about him were restriction and frustration. The people who wanted
him and his sister evicted, the sheriff who came to serve him with a
warrant, outlining another of the white man's "crimes," epitomized
the system which closed in alway about him and his.
The system killed that sheriff. Wales was the agent. Exploitation
brings about it own destruction. The system i killing the white peo­
ple around Gordonsville, around the thousand Gordonsvilles in this
country. The army of 5,000, foaming at the mouth, cursing and pot­
shotting at two old people, the army which saw nothing unusual in
�a11ing for government troops to carry out its desires-that army is
being killed. Its member already are half-dead. The dancing firelight
from the burnin cottage revealed the' decay eating away at the
ystem Wales thought to kill with rifle bullets. '
Some white people, some, even [n Virginia, are shamed by Gordons­
ville.. Tbey know there i more to the story than the killing of a
sheriff and the destruction of "crazy Negro." ,
Yes, The Crisis defends William and Cora Wales. We think we'
understand them. What is more important, we think we know the real
criminal in the e situations everywhere. Crazy? Wales was not crazy.
The two sane people in all that .array were in the hou e. It was the .
five thousand outside who ere mad.
Th, C,lsu, June, 1936; XLUI, 169-70.