Murders in Alabama

• Scipio Atchison

Murders in Alabama. The excitement still prevails in the vicinity of Dixie Station, Ala., over the killing of Scipio Atchison, colored, whose body was found in the woods, riddled with buckshot, and whose death is supposed to have been caused by white men, against whom he had made threats for pursuing his son. It is found that two more negroes, Steve Sullivan and Tom Ward, are missing. There are good grounds for believing that Sullivan was killed on the same night that Scipio Atchison was murdered. Ward is thought to have escaped. Sullivan and Ward were both friends young Atchison, who outraged the white woman, Mrs. Hesler, and had made frequent and violent threats. The shooting in both cases is supposed to have been done by a party 300 men, gathered from a section of 20 miles square. Young Atchison is still at large, but is being traced up. The white people in tho section where the murders occurred have become alarmed, owing to the threats of the negroes, and fear an insurrection in the sawmill and charcoal section, where there are several hundred colored people.

“Murders in Alabama.” National Tribune (Washington, DC), May 21, 1885.