People's Grocery lynchings
[2] Opened in 1889, the People's Grocery was a cooperative venture run along corporate lines and owned by 11 prominent African Americans, including postman Thomas Moss, a friend of Ida B.
[8] On Saturday, March 5, Judge Julius DuBose, a former Confederate soldier, was quoted in the Appeal-Avalanche newspaper as vowing to form a posse to get rid of the "high-handed rowdies" in the Curve.
In an account written by five black ministers in the St. Paul Appeal, the men were said to arrive with a rout in mind, for they had first gone to William Barrett's place then divided up and surreptitiously posted themselves at the front and back entrance to the People's Grocery.
Reports in white papers[clarification needed] described the shooting as a cold-blooded, calculated ambush by the blacks and, though none of the deputies had died, they predicted the wounds of Cole and Bob Harold, who was shot in the face and neck, would prove fatal.
Paul Appeal said as soon as the black men realized the intruders were law officers they dropped their weapons and submitted to arrest, confident they would be able to explain their case in court.
[8] On Sunday, March 6, hundreds of white civilians were deputized and fanned out from the grocery to conduct a house-to-house search for blacks involved in "the conspiracy".
They eventually arrested forty black people, including Armour Harris and his mother, Nat Trigg, and Tommie Moss.
The story in the black paper contended that Moss was tending his books at the back of the store on the night of the shooting and couldn't have seen what happened when the whites arrived.
On Monday, March 7, Tommie's pregnant wife Betty Moss came to jail with food for her husband, but was turned away by Judge DuBose who told her to come back again in three days.
They dragged Tommie Moss, Will Stewart, and Calvin McDowell from their cells and brought them to a Chesapeake & Ohio railroad yard a mile outside of Memphis.
"[This quote needs a citation] The account by the five ministers in the Appeal-Avalanche added that his injuries were in accord with his "vicious and unyielding nature.
Judge DuBose ordered the sheriff to take possession of the swords and guns belonging to the Tennessee Rifles and to dispatch a hundred men to the People's Grocery where they should "shoot down on sight any Negro who appears to be making trouble.
"[This quote needs a citation] Gangs of armed white men rushed to the Curve and began shooting wildly into any groups of blacks they encountered, then looted the grocery.
[1] At a meeting of one thousand people at Bethel A. M. E. Church in Chicago in response to this lynching as well as two earlier lynchings (Ed Coy in Texarkana, Arkansas, and a woman in Rayville, Louisiana), a call by the presiding minister for the crowd to sing the then de facto national anthem, "America (My Country, 'Tis of Thee)" was refused in protest, and the song, "John Brown's Body" was substituted.
