Pluck Enough
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Left: Color Study by Cynthia Reeves, 1951
My latest project has been intermittently under way for some time. The background of Pluck Enough is the story of Arthur Tuttle, his killing of a white police officer in May 1895, his trial in August of that year, and the group of 300 or so African American men who acted to prevent the rumored lynching of Tuttle. The goal is to understand as much as possible about the men who acted to protect Tuttle. We know almost fifty of them by name. Several of them owned businesses and were active in local politics. In several cases we know about their social and business connections and what happened to them afterwards. |
As my research and analysis have proceeded, I have published several blogposts along the way. Because of the unplanned way I've proceeded, there's a good bit of repetition in the posts and probably some inconsistencies. Here's a list of posts with some comments:
Here are the blogposts I have published so far:
(1) “The Tuttle family and the Riot” (17 Aug 2022): The Tuttles were a relatively well-do-do farming family. Walter, Arthur’s brother, was killed by a white policeman. The policeman was indicted for murder—the first policeman in town indicted for killing an African American—but found innocent. Arthur’s fight with officer Vickers, a fight that ended with Vickers' death, occurred on the day Walter’s killer was acquitted. These posts provide a detailed account of Walter's encounters with the law, the killing of Vickers, the trial of Arthur Tuttle, and the riot:
• "The Winston-Salem Riot of 1895: Part 1—Arthur Tuttle Kills Officer Vickers" (22 Nov 2024)
• "Part 2—The Trial of Arthur Tuttle" (23 Nov 2024)
• "Part 3—Preventing a Lynching" (23 Nov 2024)
(2) Three posts on group biography, or prosopography. Prosopography is usually practiced by analysis of large data sets. My approach is necessarily more qualitative than quantitative.
• “Prosopography: Towards a Collective Biography” (26 July 2022).
• “The Method and Value of Prosopography” (28 July 2022)
• “Prosopography in 1895 Winston-Salem: Some Limitations” (15 Sept 2022))
(3) Five posts on Arthur Tuttle’s protectors and their connections with themselves and others. In creating a group portrait, I have looked at newspaper accounts, census records, and vital records (marriage records, death records) available on FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com and I’ve begun to look at Forsyth County probate records. My goal is to understand where the the protectors came from, their religious and social affiliations, their networks of family, friends, and associates, their jobs and professions, and their participation in politics. (Jim Crow had not yet been imposed in North Carolina, so some participation was possible on school committees and the town council.) What happened to them afterwards?
• “Overview of Tuttle’s Protectors” (7 Sept 2022)
• “Connections (1)—Walter Tuttle, Yancey Simpson, Green Scales, and Ellis Matthews” (18 Aug 2022)
• “Connections (2a)—Samuel Toliver and Friends” (26 Aug 2022)
• “Connections (2b)—Samuel Toliver, Peter Owens, John Mack Johnson, and W. H. Neal” (1 Sept 2022)
• “Connections (3)—Micajah (Cager) Watt and the Depot Street School Neighborhood” (19 Sept 2022)
(4) “‘Pluck Enough': The Story So Far.” This post refers to the five posts above. (7 Sept 2023)
(5) “‘Pluck Enough’: An Introduction to the Background: Suicide Wrapped in an Illusion" (13 Sept 2023). The illusion was some Republicans' belief that they could gain political power by betraying African Americans, but they made up the majority of the party's voters before the imposition of Jim Crow.
(6) “‘Pluck Enough': A Note on Methodology” (15 Sept 2023, 1 Oct 2023). Perhaps I should have written “attitude” or rough principles rather than “methodology.” In this study, I try to keep in mind these principles:
(a) The future in 1895 (the year of the riot) was not inevitable. African Americans living at the time saw the Jim Crow regime forming in the Deep South and moving north, but many thought that North Carolina would be different, and for a while it was: the fusion of Republicans and Populists briefly but seriously threatened the dominance of the white supremacist Democratic party. Openness to the future--Offenheit nach der Zukunft hin—was a key principle of Golo Mann’s historiography.
(b) Imagination is necessary to understand the past. As Simon Leys notes, “At a certain depth …, all writings tend to be creative writing, for they all partake of the same essence: poetry. History (contrary to the common view) does not record events. It merely records echoes of events—which is a very different thing—and, in doing this, it must rely on imagination as much as on memory. Memory by itself can only accumulate data, pointlessly and meaninglessly.” ("Lies that Tell the Truth," The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays. New York Review of Books, Kindle Edition, 43.)
(c) This attitude is related to the previous one: history may be understood through imagining the lives that composed it, even though “individual lives … [are] in the end unknowable,” especially when they could not or did not speak for themselves (Clive James, “Lewis Namier,” Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts, Norton, Kindle Edition). This is where prosopography becomes useful.
(7) “The Ruffin Letter #1—A Survey of Political History in NC, 1865-1898” (6 Nov 2023). The anonymous writer from Ruffin in Rockingham County predicted bloodshed in the 1898 election, a prediction fulfilled by the Wilmington coup and massacre. The writer's summary of political history from 1865 to his current day is useful in understanding "the Democracy," the Democrats' Jim Crow version of today's "our Democracy." I think most readers unfamiliar with this era in North Carolina history will be surprised by the political dominance that Republicans and populists were able achieve by uniting whites and African Americans in the electoral campaigns of 1894 and 1896.
(8) “The Ruffin Letter #2: The Democratic Plan of Campaign, Part 1” (12 Jan 2024)
(9) “The Ruffin Letter #2: The Democratic Plan of Campaign, Part 2" (5 Dec 2024)
Posted 20 November 2024; updated 5 December 2024. Send questions, comments, suggestions, and criticisms to [email protected].
Here are the blogposts I have published so far:
(1) “The Tuttle family and the Riot” (17 Aug 2022): The Tuttles were a relatively well-do-do farming family. Walter, Arthur’s brother, was killed by a white policeman. The policeman was indicted for murder—the first policeman in town indicted for killing an African American—but found innocent. Arthur’s fight with officer Vickers, a fight that ended with Vickers' death, occurred on the day Walter’s killer was acquitted. These posts provide a detailed account of Walter's encounters with the law, the killing of Vickers, the trial of Arthur Tuttle, and the riot:
• "The Winston-Salem Riot of 1895: Part 1—Arthur Tuttle Kills Officer Vickers" (22 Nov 2024)
• "Part 2—The Trial of Arthur Tuttle" (23 Nov 2024)
• "Part 3—Preventing a Lynching" (23 Nov 2024)
(2) Three posts on group biography, or prosopography. Prosopography is usually practiced by analysis of large data sets. My approach is necessarily more qualitative than quantitative.
• “Prosopography: Towards a Collective Biography” (26 July 2022).
• “The Method and Value of Prosopography” (28 July 2022)
• “Prosopography in 1895 Winston-Salem: Some Limitations” (15 Sept 2022))
(3) Five posts on Arthur Tuttle’s protectors and their connections with themselves and others. In creating a group portrait, I have looked at newspaper accounts, census records, and vital records (marriage records, death records) available on FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com and I’ve begun to look at Forsyth County probate records. My goal is to understand where the the protectors came from, their religious and social affiliations, their networks of family, friends, and associates, their jobs and professions, and their participation in politics. (Jim Crow had not yet been imposed in North Carolina, so some participation was possible on school committees and the town council.) What happened to them afterwards?
• “Overview of Tuttle’s Protectors” (7 Sept 2022)
• “Connections (1)—Walter Tuttle, Yancey Simpson, Green Scales, and Ellis Matthews” (18 Aug 2022)
• “Connections (2a)—Samuel Toliver and Friends” (26 Aug 2022)
• “Connections (2b)—Samuel Toliver, Peter Owens, John Mack Johnson, and W. H. Neal” (1 Sept 2022)
• “Connections (3)—Micajah (Cager) Watt and the Depot Street School Neighborhood” (19 Sept 2022)
(4) “‘Pluck Enough': The Story So Far.” This post refers to the five posts above. (7 Sept 2023)
(5) “‘Pluck Enough’: An Introduction to the Background: Suicide Wrapped in an Illusion" (13 Sept 2023). The illusion was some Republicans' belief that they could gain political power by betraying African Americans, but they made up the majority of the party's voters before the imposition of Jim Crow.
(6) “‘Pluck Enough': A Note on Methodology” (15 Sept 2023, 1 Oct 2023). Perhaps I should have written “attitude” or rough principles rather than “methodology.” In this study, I try to keep in mind these principles:
(a) The future in 1895 (the year of the riot) was not inevitable. African Americans living at the time saw the Jim Crow regime forming in the Deep South and moving north, but many thought that North Carolina would be different, and for a while it was: the fusion of Republicans and Populists briefly but seriously threatened the dominance of the white supremacist Democratic party. Openness to the future--Offenheit nach der Zukunft hin—was a key principle of Golo Mann’s historiography.
(b) Imagination is necessary to understand the past. As Simon Leys notes, “At a certain depth …, all writings tend to be creative writing, for they all partake of the same essence: poetry. History (contrary to the common view) does not record events. It merely records echoes of events—which is a very different thing—and, in doing this, it must rely on imagination as much as on memory. Memory by itself can only accumulate data, pointlessly and meaninglessly.” ("Lies that Tell the Truth," The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays. New York Review of Books, Kindle Edition, 43.)
(c) This attitude is related to the previous one: history may be understood through imagining the lives that composed it, even though “individual lives … [are] in the end unknowable,” especially when they could not or did not speak for themselves (Clive James, “Lewis Namier,” Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts, Norton, Kindle Edition). This is where prosopography becomes useful.
(7) “The Ruffin Letter #1—A Survey of Political History in NC, 1865-1898” (6 Nov 2023). The anonymous writer from Ruffin in Rockingham County predicted bloodshed in the 1898 election, a prediction fulfilled by the Wilmington coup and massacre. The writer's summary of political history from 1865 to his current day is useful in understanding "the Democracy," the Democrats' Jim Crow version of today's "our Democracy." I think most readers unfamiliar with this era in North Carolina history will be surprised by the political dominance that Republicans and populists were able achieve by uniting whites and African Americans in the electoral campaigns of 1894 and 1896.
(8) “The Ruffin Letter #2: The Democratic Plan of Campaign, Part 1” (12 Jan 2024)
(9) “The Ruffin Letter #2: The Democratic Plan of Campaign, Part 2" (5 Dec 2024)
Posted 20 November 2024; updated 5 December 2024. Send questions, comments, suggestions, and criticisms to [email protected].