Lynching of Mr Norman
Mr. Norman (refereed to as P. Norman[1] and N.Norman[2]) was an African-American man who was lynched in Texarkana, Miller County, Arkansas by masked men on February 11, 1922. According to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary it was the 12th of 61 lynchings during 1922 in the United States. [3]
| Part of Jim Crow Era | |
| Date | February 11, 1922 |
|---|---|
| Location | Texarkana, Miller County, Arkansas |
| Participants | Four masked men claiming they were not the KKK |
| Deaths | Mr. Norman |
Background
Texarkana is a city that is bisected down the middle by the state borders of Texas and Arkansas. The west of the city is in Bowie County, Texas and the east is in Miller County, Arkansas.
Several days before the lynching of Norman Deputy Sheriff J.R. Jordan was allegedly held at gunpoint and forced to drive several miles by Mr. Norman. At some point he was arrested and held at Ashdown, Arkansas.[2]
Lynching
Deputy Sheriff J.R. Jordan had driven to Ashdown, Arkansas to pick up Mr. Norman from their jail. On February 11, 1922, while returning to Texarkana, his car was stopped by masked men, near Spring Lake Park. They seized Norman from the car and his body was found on a country road with four gunshot wounds the next day.
In addition to the lynching "five white men were flogged, one white man seized and warned, and one negro notified in a note signed KKK to leave the city as a big clean-up was in progress.”[4]
Aftermath
After the lynching, Deputy Sheriff J.R. Jordan was indicted for murder by the Bowie County grand jury for the murder of Mr. Norman. He was released on a $3,000 ($46,500 in 2022) bond.[1] On February 21, 1922, at 10:00 PM in the Four States Pressroom, four masked men burst in armed with guns. They handed a note to the men working there, Charles Nutter, Robert Lusk and the news editor. It read, "we are the four men who took the negro away from Mr. Jordan. We are citizens of Texarkana and intend to stay here. Find us. We are not K.K.K." [2]
National memorial
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 26, 2018. Featured among other things is the Memorial Corridor which displays 805 hanging steel rectangles, each representing the counties in the United States where a documented lynching took place and, for each county, the names of those lynched.[5] The memorial hopes that communities, like Miller County, Arkansas where Mr. Norman was lynched, will take these slabs and install them in their own communities.
See also
Hullen Owens was an African-American man who was lynched in Texarkana, Bowie County, Texas by a mob on May 19, 1922.
References
- Notes
- Bibliography
- "Texas Grand jurors to probe lynching of Negro resident". Arizona Republican. Phoenix, Maricopa, Arizona: Republican Pub. Co. February 14, 1922. pp. 1–12. ISSN 2157-135X. OCLC 2612512. Retrieved March 20, 2022.
- "Students see masked men". The Columbia Evening Missourian. 2157-6572: Missouri Pub. Association. March 1, 1922. pp. 1–6. ISSN 2157-6572. OCLC 19559594. Retrieved March 20, 2022.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: location (link) - "Texas Deputy Sheriff arrested for murder". Omaha Daily Bee. Omaha, Douglas, Nebraska: Edward Rosewater. February 27, 1922. pp. 1–8. ISSN 2169-7264. OCLC 42958170. Retrieved March 20, 2022.
- Robertson, Campbell (April 25, 2018). "A Lynching Memorial Is Opening. The Country Has Never Seen Anything Like It". The New York Times. Retrieved January 29, 2022.
- United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary (1926). "To Prevent and Punish the Crime of Lynching: Hearings Before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on S. 121, Sixty-Ninth Congress, First Session, on Feb. 16, 1926". United States Government Publishing Office. Retrieved January 23, 2022.