The Winston-Salem Riot of 1895: Part 1—Arthur Tuttle Kills Officer Vickers

The Western Sentinel’s dramatic headline on 23 May 1895 (left; on the right, I have created a more legible version). The newspaper supported secession in the run up to the Civil War and was a consistent and explicit supporter of Democrats and “the Democracy”—rule by white men. 

Part 1
Part 2

Late on a Sunday evening in August 1895 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, approximately 300 armed men gathered near the Forsyth County jail to prevent the rumored lynching of Arthur Tuttle, a young African American on trial for killing a police officer, Michael Vickers, in May. Newspaper accounts name almost fifty of the men, all African American. I am engaged in a project to learn all I can about these fifty men—who they were and why they acted. This post is the beginning of a three-part essay to describe Tuttle’s family background, the circumstances that led to the killing of the officer, Tuttle’s trial, and the riot that resulted when deputy sheriffs, the local militia, and unauthorized white men confronted Tuttle’s protectors. The riot was a small affair, certainly in contrast with the Wilmington coup three years later, and for that reason it has attracted mostly the interest of local historians. My account here is, I believe, the most complete published to date.
 
The following essay has been adapted from Appendix C of my annotated edition of Ida Beard’s memoir, My Own Life, or A Deserted Wife, first published in 1898. Beard describes the riot in Chapter VI of her memoir. Hers is a decidedly prejudiced account but is useful in providing insights into the fears and attitudes of the white community. Her main purpose in that chapter, as in the book as a whole, is to demonize her husband, John Lewis Beard. Much to her disgust, he assisted in the defense of Arthur Tuttle and, according to Ida, he wrote a letter to an African American minister warning of the impending lynch mob. He worked in the office of a Justice of the Peace. When the riot broke out, he hid from the authorities that sought his help in suppressing the riot and processing arrests. His role is not discussed in detail here, but it can be found in Chapter VI and Appendix A of my annotated edition of My Own Life.
 
Introduction
My narrative follows in the main the outline of events portrayed in the essay by Fambrough Brownlee, but is supplemented, and in some cases corrected, by details from contemporary sources. (1) Nearly all the sources cited here are newspapers published by and primarily for the white community. But some other voices will become apparent in the account, including that of an influential African American paper, the Richmond Planet, and a correspondent to the Planet named R. B. Garrett.
 
The specific circumstances that led to the riot are fairly simple. In May 1895, Arthur Tuttle refused the orders from two policemen to move from the sidewalk to let others (probably white women) pass; one of the policemen moved him from the sidewalk—it is not clear how much force he used. (2) Tuttle was already distressed and angry, for earlier that day a white jury had acquitted the killer of his older brother, Walter. The killer was a white policeman, J. R. Hasten. (3)
 
In the struggle that followed, Tuttle fought with the two policemen, Michael Vickers and Alex Dean. After several blows were exchanged, Tuttle grabbed a pistol and shot officer Vickers twice. Vickers died the next evening. Tuttle was arrested on the spot and shortly thereafter was moved to Greensboro and then farther away, to Charlotte, to prevent his lynching. He returned to face trial in early August. On Sunday August 11, while the trial was in recess, rumors spread through the African American and white communities that an attempt to lynch Tuttle was imminent. On Sunday night, as many as 300 armed African American men guarded the jail and refused to disperse when the authorities on two separate occasions tried to persuade them. The Forsyth Rifles were called out and formed a firing line; someone fired a shot—no one took the credit for it, though the newspapers said it was someone in the crowd—and the firing became general. The protectors scattered. A few of the Riflemen received minor injuries from birdshot; no one knows how many of Tuttle’s protectors were wounded—we have the name of only one wounded man—or how many were killed, if indeed there were deaths. Many of those arrested were tried and convicted and received penalties ranging from fines to hard labor on the county roads (some sentences were suspended, for example, for those in bad health). Two days after the riot, Tuttle was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years at hard labor, with the possibility of release for good behavior after 17 or 18 years.
 
Background
The background of the story is, to some extent, the story of the Tuttle family. We can begin it with Walter Tuttle, Arthur’s oldest brother, a talented tobacco roller but (as at least the white community saw him) a difficult, antagonistic personality. His first mention in the papers came in 1890, for fighting; he was convicted of “affray” and sentenced to four months of hard labor on the public roads. (4) He was back in court, on two charges of fighting, in December 1891, and again in January 1892, after a fight in which his opponent was reported to have nearly severed Walter’s left hand with an axe. (5) So far as I can determine from the newspapers, the turning point in his life may have been an incident in March 1892, when he and Sim Brannon (or Branson) accepted a job from a drunken white man, Bob Willey (or Wiley), to attack Mack Nelson, a white farmer from Rockingham, at a local tobacco warehouse. Though opposed by three men, the farmer gave better than he got; Walter and Willey were seriously wounded by Nelson’s knife, and for a while it was feared that they would die. Sheriff John W. Bradford and Sim Brannon attended their wounds all night. (6) Walter then fled town to avoid another stint of hard labor. (7) He was not apprehended until December. (8) Later, when Walter assaulted Bradford and initiated the chain of events that led to his death and the death of Michael Vickers, the Western Sentinel wondered whether past mistreatment by Bradford had provoked that assault. (9) I suspect that, if Walter held a grudge against the sheriff, it dated back to their extended interactions over the fight with farmer Nelson.
 
In March 1893, Walter was tried for his involvement in several fights, and for one of them he was sentenced to twelve months on the public roads. (10) He then disappeared from the newspapers for 18 months. On July 21, 1894, he assaulted Bradford (no longer the sheriff), possibly in revenge for some old wrong, as noted above; when he was arrested, he unsuccessfully tried to escape—this had become a definite pattern. Walter was convicted in the Mayor’s Court and sentenced to pay a fine or again serve hard time on the county roads. Officer Hasten accompanied Walter on a quest to find someone who would pay his fine and help him avoid a third stint at hard labor; but his employer, tobacco manufacturer T. L. Vaughn, turned him down. (11) Unable to obtain help, Walter again tried to escape and, in the ensuing struggle on the grounds of Vaughn’s factory, he was fatally shot by policeman Hasten. Hasten claimed that Tuttle had tried to grab his weapon, but eyewitness disagreed. In a surprising turn of events, the officer was indicted for murder. (12) Hasten’s acquittal on May 18, 1895, however, was not surprising. (13)
 
Walter was just 26 years old at the time of his death. (14) He was the third child born to Charles and Margaret Tuttle, listed in the 1880 census as a farmer and homemaker in Middle Fork Township of Forsyth County. Three of his younger brothers are involved in the rest of story—Robert, who turned 24 in 1895; Arthur, who turned 20 that year; and Allie, born after the 1880 census and just twelve years of age at the time of Walter’s death.
 
Arthur Tuttle Shoots Police Officer Vickers
On the day of Hasten’s acquittal, Arthur was part of the large crowd on the sidewalk near the courthouse. It was the usual Saturday crowd, according to the newspapers. Eyewitnesses told the Western Sentinel that, on their way back to City Hall from the jail, Officers Vickers and Dean “called upon the colored people to clear the side-walk…. Tuttle refused to obey instructions, whereupon Mr. Vickers pushed him back.” (15) In trial testimony, Officer Dean testified that Vickers gave his order so that a white lady could pass down the street and that it was he, not Vickers, who “put [Tuttle] off the sidewalk.” Vickers’ “dying declaration” was allowed at the trial; he was quoted as stating that it was Dean who tried to “lead” Tuttle from the sidewalk. (16) Fam Brownlee, a leading authority on the history of Winston-Salem, believes that the officers acted rashly: they must have known Arthur Tuttle and they must have known that he was under deep emotional stress at that moment. A set of tragedies might have been avoided had they acted with discretion. (17)
 
Brownlee’s understanding is supported by what we know of Tuttle’s state of mind on that Saturday afternoon. After Tuttle was pushed, he “struck at the officer.” In testimony delivered after the jury had convicted Tuttle of second-degree murder, but before the judge passed sentence, jailer Ziglar told the court that Tuttle had confided that he thought he had struck Officer Hasten and he wondered why Hasten had not testified at the trial. In other words, he mistakenly thought he had slugged the policeman who had killed his brother, Walter. (18) Had this evidence come out during the trial, there might have been a stronger case for first-degree murder. It is not known whether this testimony affected the judge’s sentence, though the judge did commend the jury for its decision to convict Tuttle of second-degree rather than first-degree murder. (19)
 
The eyewitness account compiled by the Western Sentinel continues: “Policeman Dean ran up and caught hold of one arm of Tuttle. A scuffle followed when [Tuttle] tripped Mr. Vickers, causing him to fall. Mr. Dean was also pulled down [the] street several feet. As soon as Mr. Vickers could recover he arose and went to assist his brother officer.” Tuttle struck Vickers in the mouth with his fist and knocked him down—across a crate of cabbage, according to trial testimony. (20) Dean then struck Tuttle in the head with his billy club, but Tuttle pulled out a pistol and “fired twice in quick succession,” striking Vickers in the neck and in the lower part of the abdomen. Dean and others subdued Tuttle and took him to jail. Vickers was taken to the Rierson boarding house, at the corner of Fourth and Church streets, where he died after 7 on Sunday evening, leaving behind a wife and two sons. (21)
 
The killing of Vickers exacerbated tensions in the town. As some of the first newspaper reports noted, “For some time after the shooting it looked like serious trouble would follow. A large crowd congregated on Main Street, at the City Hall Building, where the crime was committed, and it required the efforts of several officers to get the surging crowd back and cause it to disperse.” There were two fears—that attempts would be made by members of the white community to lynch Tuttle and that members of the African American community would try to break him from prison. Neither was attempted, and the Western Sentinel published an editorial praising the “spirit of moderation” that had prevailed in the white community over the desire for immediate revenge, though it thought “the circumstances attending [the killing of Vickers] were of a very aggravating nature.” (22) The national and especially southern climate made the possibility of lynching seem all too real: the newspapers were full of stories about actual and feared incidents of lynching, which often began with the mob seizing a prisoner from jail; staging a jail-break was one possible way to enable a prisoner to escape extrajudicial murder, though I do not think a single example was reported in the Winston-Salem papers in the first seven months of 1895. (23)
 
Tuttle was quickly moved to the Guilford County jail in Greensboro and, after a few days, to the more distant Mecklenburg County jail in Charlotte. (24) He was held there till the week of the trial in August.
NOTES
 
(1) Fambrough Brownlee, “Murder, Rumors of Murder and Even More Rumors…” I have noted one difference in the chronology: in Brownlee’s account, the riot took place after the trial. However, the trial opened on Friday, August 9. Closing arguments concluded on the following Monday, and the jury returned their verdict on Tuesday, April 13. The riot took place while the court was in recess for Sunday. It began on the evening of Sunday, August 11, and continued into early Monday morning.
(2) In the 1880 census, Arthur Tuttle (25 December 1875 – 11 December 1946; G7X2-5M2) was the sixth child of Charles Tuttle (1827 – Deceased; G7X2-MDN) and Margaret Tuttle (1841 – Deceased; G7X2-QSZ). Unless otherwise indicated, the birth and death dates and unique identifiers in this study are from FamilySearch.org, a crowd-sourced, document-based family history database.
Also playing parts in the events recounted here were his older brothers Walter (1867 – 1894; G7X2-MD8), William (1868 – deceased; G7X2-5FM), and Robert (1871 – 1964; G7X2-NMR). See "United States Census, 1880," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MC65-ZWK: 19 February 2021), Arthur Tuttle in household of Charles Tuttle, Middle Fork, Forsyth, North Carolina, United States; citing enumeration district ED 79, sheet 358D, NARA microfilm publication T9 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.), FHL microfilm 1,254,963.
(3) “Tuttle Gets 25 Years for the Murder of Policeman Vickers,” Western Sentinel, 22 Aug 1895, 1. Unless otherwise indicated, the newspapers cited in the notes were published in Winston-Salem, NC, and were found in Newspapers.com.
(4) Affray is a type of disorderly conduct generally understood to mean a fight between “two or more persons in a public place that disturbs others” (“Affray,” The Free Dictionary. The local papers have numerous accounts of arrests for affray.
(5) “Local Items,” People’s Press, 28 Jan 1892, 3. Even if the paper exaggerated the extent of his injury, this wound must have affected Walter’s ability to roll cigars and cigarettes, but no source comments on this.
(6) “Nelson Used His Knife. Bob Willey and Walter Tuttle Feel the Cold Steel. A Bloody Affray at the Piedmont Warehouse – Farmer Mack Nelson Defends Himself from the Toughs That Tried to Lick Him – Both Men Dangerously Hurt,” Western Sentinel, 31 Mar 1892, 3.
(7) “That Cutting Affair. The Parties to the Affair Bound Over to Court this Morning,” Western Sentinel, 19 May 1892, 3.
(8) “Walter Tuttle Arrested. The Officer Had to Knock Him Down Before he [sic] Gave Up. Tuttle Somewhat of a Desperado,” Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 7 Dec 1892, 1. He was captured by Deputy Sherriff J. E. Ziglar, who served as the jailer in 1895 when Arthur Tuttle was held in the Forsyth County jail.
(9) “Shot by a Policeman. Walter Tuttle, Colored, Seriously Wounded,” Western Sentinel, 26 July 1894, 3. Bradford had a reputation for being rough. In 1897, when he was no longer sheriff, Bradford was arrested by policemen White and Frazier on a warrant for theft. When Bradford complained of cruel treatment—the policemen had put chains around his wrists when he refused to leave a bar to go with them to jail—White replied, “D― you, you have treated many a man worse than this for less offences” (“Policemen Cleared,” Western Sentinel, 9 Dec 1897, 1).
(10) “Superior Court,” Western Sentinel, 6 March 1893, 3.
(11) Fam Brownlee, “Murder, Rumors of Murder and Even More Rumors…”
(12) According to Fam Brownlee, it was “‘the first time in the history of Winston [that] a white police officer was indicted by an all-white grand jury for murdering a black man.’” Cited by Eddie Huffman, “Hidden History II: The 1895 Riot.”
(13) Verdict of Not Guilty in the Case of the State Vs. J.R. Hasten,” Western Sentinel, 23 May 1895, 1.
John Raymond Hasten, also known as Hastings (21 January 1857 - 8 May 1926; L6RD-X73) was born in Kernersville. In Winston, after serving as policeman till 1906, he was appointed deputy sheriff by Sheriff J. E. Ziglar (“County Board Held Meeting,” Winston-Salem Journal, 4 Dec 1906, 1).
(14) Walter Tuttle (1867 – 8 July 1894; G7X2-MD8) married Susie Bynum (1870 - Deceased; G7X2-MGY) in 1888 and left behind at least one child, Leona, a three-year-old at the time of his death. Evidence for their connection is Leona’s death certificate ("North Carolina Deaths, 1906-1930," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F3XL-BV2: 16 August 2019), Leona Smith, 11 Feb 1922; citing Greensboro, Guilford, North Carolina, reference fn 673 cn 794 217, State Department of Archives and History, Raleigh; FHL microfilm 1,892,803.)
(15) “Superior Court. Two Murder Cases the Center of Interest," Union Republican, 15 Aug 1895, 3.
(16) “Tuttle Murder Trial. Report of Evidence as Given for the State,” Western Sentinel, 15 Aug 1895, 1.
(17) Conversation between the writer and Fam Brownlee, 16 November 2018, in the North Carolina Room of the Forsyth Country Central Library.
(18) “Tuttle Gets 25 Years for the Murder of Policeman Vickers,” Western Sentinel, 22 Aug 1895, 1.
James Edward Ziglar (18 January 1855 – 25 October 1911; KT3B-QGL) became deputy sheriff and jailer in December 1892. Because of Ziglar’s interactions with Walter, he and Arthur Tuttle may already have been acquainted. Shortly after his appointment as deputy sheriff, Ziglar arrested Walter Tuttle in Stokes County; Tuttle had been on the lam for months after his conviction for stabbing Mack Nelson (“Walter Tuttle Arrested,” Twin-City Daily Sentinel, 7 December 1892, 1). When Officer Hasten was tried for murdering Walter, Ziglar testified for the prosecution (“Verdict of Not Guilty,” Western Sentinel, 23 May 1895, 1).
(19) “Tuttle Gets 25 Years for the Murder of Policeman Vickers," Western Sentinel, 22 Aug 1895, 1.
(20) “Tuttle Murder Trial. Report of Evidence as Given for the State,” Western Sentinel, 15 Aug 1895, 1.
(21) The eyewitness account is reported in “Horrible Affair! How Policeman Vickers Lost His Life,” Western Sentinel, 23 May 1895, 1. John Lewis Beard told his wife that he and Jeff Grogan feared the defense would lose “their case on account of the d---- little Vickers children, who sat sniveling in the court-room” (My Own Life, chapter VI, page 103 in the fifth edition; further references to My Own Life will cite only chapter number and fifth edition page number).
(22) “The Proper Course,” Western Sentinel, 23 May 1895, 1.
(23) Interestingly, in her account of the trial and riot, Ida wrote that African American prisoners escaped from the prison during the riot (VI, 103). The statement is inaccurate, but that she thought it true suggests how rumors and fears can congeal into the memory of an event that did not happen.
(24) “Two Fatal Bullets: Policeman M. M. Vickers Loses His Life While in the Performance of His Duties,” Union Republican, 23 May 1895, 3; “Reidsville News,” Reidsville (NC) Review, 24 May 1895, 3; “Over the State,” Evening Visitor (Raleigh, NC), 23 May 1895, 4.

Posted 22 November 2024