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{
    "localId": "40020140",
    "label": "Letter from Albert E. Barnett to Tom Clark",
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}

{
    "id": "40020140",
    "sourceUrl": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/40020140",
    "contentType": "document",
    "title": "Letter from Albert E. Barnett to Tom Clark",
    "citationUrl": "https://catalog.archives.gov/id/40020140",
    "collections": [
        "Eleanor Bontecou Papers",
        "Civil Rights Files"
    ],
    "subjects": [
        "Lynching",
        "Civil rights",
        "Race riots"
    ],
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    "productionDates": [
        {
            "day": 15,
            "logicalDate": "1946-03-15",
            "month": 3,
            "year": 1946
        }
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{
    "seq": 1,
    "pageIndex": 0,
    "type": "photo",
    "url": "https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/40/201/40020140/content/presidential-libraries/truman/201205/B18_16-01_01.jpg",
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    "ocrText": "723 Simpson Street\nEvanston, Illinois\nMarch 15, 1946\nThe rope with which Cordie\nHon. Tom Clark\nCheek was hanged was bought\nAttorney General of the United States\nat a hardware store in\nDepartment of Justice\nLewisburg, Governor McCord's\nWashington, D. C.\nhome town.\nMy dear Mr. Clark:\nThe statement of Clark Foreman, President Southern Conference of\nHuman Welfare, regarding the anti-Negro violence at Columbia, Tennessee came to\nme through the mail today. It has presumably been placed in your hands with urgent\ninsistence on Federal investigation and action. Like Mr. Clark Foreman, my ante-\ncedents are Georgian and Alabamian. Like him, I am a southern Democrat. I write\nyou in hearty support of the procedures he urges. Our voices are voices of\nsouthern white men who are not only Democrats but democrats! The Bilbos and Rankins\nillustrate the possible difference between the two.\nI lived for twenty years in Nashville, Tennessee. With Dr.\nThomas Elza Jones, president of Fisk University of that city, I carefully in-\nvestigated the lynching of Cordie Cheek by & Columbia, Tennessee mob. When I\nread accounts of the recent disturbances at Columbia in the Nashville Tennessean, the\nname of C. H. Denton caught my eye. He is the magistrate who fixed bail for Negroes\narrested and denied bail to others. Looking back into my file on the Cordie Cheek\nlynching of December 15, 1933, I discovered that the automobile of the same C. H.\nDENTON WAS USED IN THE ABDUCTION OF CORDIE CHEEK. ARMED MEN ABDUCTED NEGRO BOY,\nONLY SEVENTEEN YEARS OF AGE FROM HIS UNCLE'S HOME IN NASHVILLE WHEN A MAURY COUNTY\nGRAND JURY HAD ADJOURNED WITHOUT INDICTING HIM, THREW HIM INTO C. H. DENTON'S CAR,\nDROVE TO A POINT ON THE COLUMBIA-LEWISBURG ROAD, AND IN THE PRESENCE OF FIVE HUNDRED\nTO A THOUSAND SPECTATORS HANGED HIM TO A CEDAR TREE BY THE ROADSIDE. White residents\nof Maury County told Dr. Jones and me that invitations to the lynching were tele-\nphone from C. H. Denton's home telephone to people all about Maury County notifying\nof the time and place of the lynching and inviting them to see the show.\nIt is a travesty on justice that Negroes under arrest at Columbia\nin the present situation should have their bond set or denied by a magistrate whose\ncar was used in the abduction and lynching of Cordie Cheek in 1933 and over whose\ntelephone invitations were allegedly issued to people to witness the lynching.\nMr. Witherspoon, a deputy sheriff who with a white farmer named Cheatham saved\nCordie Cheek from lynching a month earlier, was dismissed as deputy sheriff shortly\nafter the lynching had occurred. I wrote this case up in detail for the late\nSenator Edward P. Costigan at the time the Costigan-Wagner Federal Anti-lynching bill\nwas being considered in committee. I can furnish you with a copy of the study if\nyou desire it. It shows that the Maury County Coroner who declared Cordie Cheek came\nto death \"by hands unknown\" was actually the man who pushed the boy off a step ladder\nand hanged him! Negroes can hardly expect justice from local officers of such atti-\ntudes.\nRespectfully,\nCopy to Gov. Jim McCord\nAlbert E. Barnett\nNashville, Tenne ssee"
}