One Lynched; Six Shot in Alabama Riot

The Dead

Grover Boyd, white, shot to death while defending Clarence Boyd in the original attack.

Charles Marrs, white, posse member, wounded fatally at the cabin which the posse stormed, then burned.

John Robinson, owner of the cabin and uncle of Esau, shot as he fled from his home.

Esau Robinson, hanged from a tree and riddled with bullets near the smoking ruins of the cabin.

Two unidentified men believed burned to death when the posse fired the cabin.

One unidentified man, who was shot when he refused to submit to search.

Mrs. Jesse Dial, who was shot down when she and her husband were escaping from the mob of whites at Markeeta, Miss. Her husband escaped.

This town was placed on the 1930 lynching dishonor roll last week when it hung, riddled with bullets and then burned the body of Esau Robinson following an altercation with a local white over a storage battery.

It is said that Robinson killed the white, Grover Boyd, when the latter demanded a second-hand storage battery which Robinson had failed to pay him for.

The killing of Boyd resulted in a wholesale killing of the Robinson family, the burning of two uniden-tified men and the death of one of the posse members, who was shot when he stormed the Robinson cabin.

The total known dead Thursday had mounted to eight, with the kill-ing of an unidentified man and women-an at Markeeta, Miss., ten miles west of here. These slayings apparently ended the 18th lynching of 1930, for with the killing of this man and the wife of Jesse Dial, shot as she and her husband fled from the posse as it commanded them to halt, the small army of whites dispersed and its members returned to their homes. Jesse Dial escaped when his wife was shot.

The unidentified man was slain as he stood in a door of the Mobile and Ohio railroad station and fired at whites when they commanded him to submit to search. He wounded three, one of whom may die, before he was shot through the head.

Meanwhile, Gov. Bibb Graves an-nounced by wire from Montgomery he would offer a reward of $300 for any of the three of the Robinson family who had a part in the two killings. No mention was made, however, of the lynchings and wholesale slaying by the mob of whites. The reward proclamation read dead or alive.

Two of the Robinson family are still at large, Sheriff E. D. Scales, who took charge of the search and is said to have tried to control the unruly mob, expressed the opinion that the two would be killed when found.

The trouble is said to have been precipitated Monday when Clarence Boyd found Jacob Robinson at a bar-becue and demanded payment for a storage battery he had sold him.

Robinson said that he did not have the money, so Boyd grabbed the bat-tery and started to leave. Later Robinson appeared at the store where Boyd was and asked to talk to him. Boyd is supposed to have stepped aside and found Robinson’s brother Oliver and his father. The three were said to have jumped on the white and began beating him.

Grover Boyd, uncle of Clarence and Carl Scales, hearing Clarence’s cries, went to his assistance and one of the Robinsons snatched a gun out of Boyd’s hand and fired four shots at Grover. He dropped dead. Scales and others who came running up seized Jacob but the others escaped. The mob which quickly assembled took Jacob to the woods, strung him up, riddled the body with bullets, and then burned it.

The sheriff then started his posse composed of mob members who had come back from supper, after the two escaped Robinsons. The posse headed for the home of John Robinson and was repulsed with gunfire. They burned the cabin and killed Robinson, but not until he had seriously wound-ed two members of the mob, however.

Governor Graves then ordered a squad of law enforcers from Mont-gomery and another from Birming-ham to aid in the search for the hunted men. No mention was made of the apprehension of the lynchers, however.

Many of the mob suffered wounds when an attack was made on a cabin containing several Race citizens, who returned their fire. An attempt was made to set the cabin on fire, which proved unsuccessful. A man with a beer bottle in his hand rushed out and beat eight or nine members of the mob down with the queer weapon before he was wounded.

Sheriff Scales said that several non-white who were not implicated in the affair offered their services to aid in capturing the Robinsons. It is said some of them loaned their guns to mob members.

A coroner’s jury late Thursday re-turned a verdict that the seven Race citizens came to their death at the “hands of party or parties unknown.” Officials had made no indication that an investigation would be conducted.

This one includes the “Unidentified Man.”